President Obama’s “American Jobs Act” Echoes Martin Luther King’s “Life’s Blueprint”

Sept. 21, 2011 - PRLog -- By. John F. Robinson, President & CEO
National Minority Business Council

   In October 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia about their “life’s blueprint.”
   In his remarks, Dr. King explained that a building can’t be well-constructed without a good solid blueprint.  Drawing on this analogy, Dr. King asked his young audience if in the process of building a structure for their lives, “do you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint?”
   On the eve of the formal dedication of the King Memorial on the Washington Mall and what may be the eve of finally getting a job stimulus package that holds the promise of actually creating jobs, the National Minority Business Council (www.nmbc.org) joins the chorus of many who have advocated for the passage of this legislation.  We view it as a solid “blueprint” for getting the government working, Americans working, and corporations and small business owners hiring.
   Dr. King spoke to his student audience about what he felt should be the number one item in a life’s blueprint:  “A deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness.  Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re nobody.  Always feel that you count.  Always feel that you have worth and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.”
   For the estimated 14 million Americans who are unemployed, how many have a sense of being the “somebodiness” that Dr. King spoke of 44 years ago?  NMBC believes that President Obama’s proposed Americans Job Act holds the promise of restoring to them their dignity and sense of being that they count, that their life has ultimate significance.  Passing this legislation should cut across all partisan bickering over whether or not this legislation will work, create more of a deficit or pay for itself -- as the President has repeatedly vowed that it will -- and, at the end of the day, create new jobs without having to wait for the outcome of the November 2012 presidential election.  
We can’t wait until then or, more realistically, until the first quarter of 2013 for either President Obama or his Republican successor to launch yet another initiative to get the economy out of the deadly holding pattern which it has been in for far too many years.
   Dr. King also challenged the ten to thirteen-year-olds in his audience to have a Life’s Blueprint that will help them “achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor…Set out to do well.”  If the American Jobs Act does not get passed in its current form, or if it gets so watered down and compromised so as not to be recognizable, who then will be acting like ten and thirteen-year-olds? Who then will be the schoolyard bullies who are always itching for a fight just for the sake of roughing up their foes, not out of principle or honor but just because they have the upper hand.  But if members of Congress on either side of the aisle are reduced to behaving like juvenile delinquents, how do Americans gain?  Will we be able to continue to claim that we are any better than the bullying of dictators who thrive on attacking Americans, literally and figuratively, for ideals that are envied by most peoples around the world?
   For nearly forty years, the National Minority Business Council has been the champion of mostly small, minority, women owned, and, more recently, Veteran-owned businesses.  Many of these companies have been especially hard-hit by the relentless recession and its accompanying high unemployment. As corporations have tightened their belts to the point of sucking out the air and blood of the small vendors who have benefitted from diversity supplier programs, NMBC is witnessing first-hand the hardships of the companies that we represent.  And yet, ironically, all politicians, Republicans, Democrats, independents and now Tea Partiers, love to point to small businesses as the primary source of creating new jobs.  One of the core features of President Obama’s proposed legislation is a $4000 tax credit for each new job created.  That $4000 could go a long way towards improving the overall quality of life for small business owners and their employees, possibly the introduction of an affordable group health insurance plan, another “schoolyard” scuffle of the U.S.Capitol building.
                   In his Life’s Blueprint remarks, Dr. King evoked the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, “If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”  While many immigrants continue to beat a path to our door and politicians, President Obama included, continue to preach “better sermons,” this country is long overdue for once again building a better mousetrap.  President Obama’s American Jobs Act may not be the best mouse trap ever designed but it’s a solid new model for replacing the model that has been broken for far too many years.  NMBC joins the President’s rallying cry and urges members of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate to “Pass this Bill!”

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The National Minority Business Council, Inc. (NMBC), a not-for-profit 501 (c)(3) corporation, was founded in December 1972. The primary purpose of the organization is to enhance the success and profitability of the small business community through the provision of high-quality services, programs, advocacy and networking support. The secondary purpose is to act as an information clearinghouse for the women- and minority-owned business enterprise (MWBE) community.