Published: September 19, 2004
by: Susan Phillips
September 20, 2004
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Former NH Gov. Jeanne Shaheen |
The September 15, 2004 event was organized by the Campaign for Youth, which represents more than 1,000 community and faith-based organizations that work with disadvantaged young people.
Expectations
I sat down beforehand with a group from YO! Cleveland. (YO! stands for Youth Opportunity.) As career coach Roshia Furnace explained, YO! operates in one of Cleveland’s “empowerment zones”, the name given certain high poverty neighborhoods under a Clinton-era program that provided extra assistance. “We have a high dropout rate, high unemployment, high rate of teen pregnancy,” said Furnace. He and his colleagues work with more than 1,000 local youth, connecting them with education, training, child care and other supports.
I asked the Cleveland YO! participants about their expectations for the event.
“I’m hoping to hear a rundown of what’s going on with youth today – what their ideas are for creating better job opportunities,” said Derryo Pear, 22.
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Nicholas Garcia |
And Leonard Church, 20, was looking for the bottom line. “I hope we can get more funding for our programs. The main needs I see are better jobs and better education.”
Setting the Stage
The format called for the two surrogates – former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen for the Kerry campaign, and former Montana Governor Marc Racicot for Bush – to answer questions from a panel selected by the Campaign for Youth.
Shaheen, in her introduction, noted that young voters could well decide the coming election. “The 2000 election was decided in Florida by 547 votes,” said Shaheen. “That’s only twice as many voters as there are in this room right now.” When she asked how many were registered and planned to vote, almost everyone raised their hands.
She asked the young people in the audience to review the Bush record. “We’ve lost 1.6 million jobs since Bush took office, and 5 million more have lost their health insurance. There are 4.3 million more Americans in poverty, and 1.3 million of those are children,” said Shaheen. She also said that Bush, in his budget proposal for 2005, calls for eliminating funding for Youth Opportunity Grants.
Racicot, in his introduction, argued that Bush understands the importance of job training initiatives, and noted Bush’s creation of the Disadvantaged Youth Task Force, which he said was working with state agencies to coordinate youth services in order to get the most out of every dollar. He said the president believes it is important to put money only into those programs that are effective.
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Former Montana Governor Marc Racicot |
Not Your Father’s Q&A
That the questions at least were not going to be standard campaign-trail fare was clear from the start: Michael Sells, 19, of Elkton, Maryland described high school troubles that had him on the verge of dropping out, until an anger management program and mentoring helped him reconnect with school. Now a volunteer firefighter and high school graduate, Sells said he was worried about high dropout rates, and asked how the candidates would address the problem.
“John Kerry has a plan to address the dropout rate,” said Shaheen. “He has a plan that would help provide mentoring and tutoring.” She also said Kerry supports federal funding to replace large, impersonal high schools with smaller schools offering more individual attention.
Racicot acknowledged that high dropout rates “are really an epidemic problem in this country.” He said Bush supports new opportunities for students to take Advanced Placement courses, and the development of more on-line educational opportunities for non-traditional high school students. “There’s a lot of work left to be done on that and he knows it,” said Racicot.
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Racicot, in his reply, focused on the role of Turner’s church in helping to turn his life around. “This is the first president ever so dedicated to empowering faith-based organizations,” said Racicot. “They are highly efficient, sensitive and thoughtful, and they are community-based.”
Shaheen answered Turner’s question in terms of the resources devoted to crime and public safety, rather than in terms of racism and disproportionate sentencing of minorities.
“You’re right, crime does disproportionately affect the minority community,” said Shaheen. She cited Kerry proposals to fund programs aimed at reducing gang violence, and to increase the numbers of police officers and probation and parole officers.
Similarly, Tanya Esparza’s question about whether the candidates supported giving legal status to the children of immigrants so they could get into college and get good jobs produced answers that were not precisely on-point.
Shaheen’s answer focused on job creation and college costs rather than immigrants’ legal status. “John Kerry has a plan for ending outsourcing. He would create tax incentives to create jobs here, and invest in science and technology,” said Shaheen. To make it easier for low-income youth to afford college, Shaheen said, Kerry supports giving families tax credits equal to the average tuition at public four-year universities. Students who participated in a service program for two years would receive four years’ worth of tuition grants in exchange.
When Esparza, a Washington, DC resident, asked directly if Kerry supported giving young immigrants visas or some other form of legal documentation, Shaheen replied, “John Kerry believes we need to fix our immigration laws, and we should not deny services to undocumented immigrants.”
Racicot said that in a second term, Bush would “move forward with initiatives on language-appropriate education.” He said the president has taken a bold stance on reforming immigration law, and said that 11 million immigrants face uncertainty “because our law has not been specific, understandable, or applied.” According to Racicot, Bush supports establishing a “principled process” for determining the status of undocumented immigrants.
Shaima Azami, 19, the single mother of a two-year-old, said she came to America at age 4 and dropped out of school at 17 when she became pregnant. Azami, a native of Kabul, Afghanistan, had lost both her parents to a bomb in her native country at the age of 5. She asked how the candidates “would make it easier for young parents to take steps to independence, such as access to affordable housing and college?”
“One of the very disturbing trends in the last four years is the reduction in public support for housing,” said Shaheen, citing a Bush administration proposal to cut the Section 8 housing voucher program. “John Kerry thinks that is the wrong direction.” She said Kerry also would expand the child care tax credit.
Racicot said that Bush “has been very aggressive on housing, and on minority homeownership in particular.” And he mentioned a new proposal to create “opportunity zones” in low-income urban areas, which would offer special incentives for economic development and homeownership.
Pressed by moderator Robert Siegal of National Public Radio on Bush’s plan to cut Section 8 , Racicot said that Section 8 needs to be reformed. “But are you cutting Section 8?” Segal pressed. “We have increased funding for homeownership,” said Racicot.
Post-Mortem
Afterwards, I asked Church and Garcia for their impressions.
“Wow, that was different,” said Church. “He (Racicot) wasn’t giving direct answers. I think she (Shaheen) was giving more direct answers…A lot of what (Racicot) was saying was to cover up what they haven’t done. In everyday life, the efforts he was talking about aren’t showing.”
I asked Church what question he would have asked. “Why is it so hard for everybody to get a job? I don’t mean why is it hard for this or that particular person – just, why does it seem so hard for everybody? Why not create some programs that actually create jobs?”
“I feel that Kerry would be better for us right now. More people would benefit. No one knows what’s going on, what direction Bush is going. He hasn’t really sat down and laid out an agenda,” said Garcia. “I thought the panel asked great questions, but 90 percent of them didn’t get an answer. Shaheen didn’t answer all the questions either, but she did give you a basic game plan for what Kerry is going to do, and it was consistent.”
And what had he learned? “I learned a lot about politics. You have to read between the lines, because not everything is right on the lines.”
http://www.connectforkids.org/node/620
Links:
[1] http://www.youthbuild.org/
[2] http://www.youthbuild.org/)%20