Fudge says it’s time to embrace our diversity

Published January 23, 2014 at 9:45 p.m.

By Marilyn Miller from the Akron Beacon Journal 

With the celebration of the life and legacy of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge said it was the perfect time to have a discussion on race.

Fudge, who represents Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, which includes parts of Akron, Cleveland and Summit and Cuyahoga counties, was elected to Congress in 2008, 2010 and 2012. The Democrat is also the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

She spoke at Quaker Square for a luncheon Thursday sponsored by the Akron Press Club and the University of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute.
“Dr. King accepted the Nobel Peace Prize even though he couldn’t understand why he had received it because he knew he had not won any of the battles he had been fighting,” Fudge told a crowd of more than 200.

She quoted King’s acceptance speech in 1964: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.”

She said over the past six to eight months, the nation has observed a number of landmark events that shaped the civil rights movement over the last 50 years.

Fudge noted that in August it was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for jobs and justice. This year on Jan. 8, the nation marked President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration of the War on Poverty and in between the nation recalled Sept. 15, 1963, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where four little girls were killed going to Sunday school.

Fudge said although there has been a lot of change in the 50 years for the better, many things have not improved at all and some things have been on a reverse course.

“In 2014 public accommodations were no longer segregated, hate crimes are punished under the law and Barack Obama is the first African-American president, who was not only elected but re-elected by the majority of voters in this country,” she said. “Yet this nation is more polarized than it has been in a generation. We are divided not just economically, but racially as well.”

The congresswoman talked about how Obama has been disrespected and has had to endure more negative confrontations than any other president because of racism.

She offered some evidence: the record number of filibusters in the Senate to his proposed legislation; the historic number of judicial and administrative nominees being denied by party-line votes on the Senate floor; the so-called birther movement that questioned Obama’s citizenship; the disrespect of the presidency by a member of Congress shouting out “you lie” at a State of the Union address; and the Republican leader in the Senate stating that his goal is to make sure the president fails.

“Yes, there is an African-American family at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and they are not the hired help,” Fudge said. “I believe the deep dislike of our president goes beyond ideology and personality differences. It’s a symptom of a latent discomfort that persists among some people for communities of color.”

An advocate of civil rights, voting rights, education and youth, Fudge also talked about the disparity in Washington, D.C., when discussing issues that target the poor and minorities.

“[Critics of] SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] and food stamps talk about how able-bodied people should work, they talk about the blessing of work, the fraud and abuse. Fraud and abuse is less than 2 percent of all of the resources of food stamps and 80-plus percent of all the people on food stamps are either children, the disabled or senior citizens.”

She addressed extending unemployment benefits, saying her opponents don’t want it because they say it will create a culture of dependency.

“They will talk about entitlements, like it is something people don’t deserve. Many of which are not entitlements, they are earned benefits,” she said. “If you work, you pay unemployment insurance, you pay into Social Security and Medicare. It is not a gift.”

She addressed why early voting rules have changed for the last three elections.

“If you’ve never voted early, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t important for other people. Some people can’t get to the Board of Elections from 9 to 4 and need weekends and evening hours. Our goal should always be to make it easier to vote, not more difficult,” she said. “Now we have confusion. Cutting back our voting options has a disproportionate negative effect on certain populations, among them communities of color, urban voters, students, elderly and low income, not just minorities.”

Fudge noted that Pope Francis has called attention to poverty and Johnson’s War on Poverty reduced it from 26 percent to 16 percent, but more needs to be done. She said in her district, 38 percent of children are below the poverty level. In 1999, the poverty rate in the city of Akron stood at just over 17 percent. By 2012 it was 26.8.

“King understood how important the conversation about poverty was because in his final message he said that poverty was a civil rights battle and it’s still true today,” Fudge said. “Poverty is an epidemic in this country.

‘‘Where do we go from here? We have to target resources to communities most needed and take a closer look at policies that contribute to the growing income gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us.”

http://www.ohio.com/news/fudge-says-it-s-time-to-embrace-our-diversity-1.461402