Some Chicago activists are voicing alarm at President Obama’s agenda, using real-life examples from their urban communities to claim he’s out of touch with his hometown.
“If this is what you call helping us, then just stop helping us,” Mark Carter, a member of Voice of the Ex-Offender said.
Carter joined other grassroots activists from Voice of the Ex-Offender and the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign in a Chicago catfish house Tuesday night to respond to President Obama’s State of the Union address.
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“What Obama did was perpetuate a reality that is so far removed from what is really happening to us as poor people, as black people, and as young people,” Mehgan Kyle added.
Around 1:41 in the video, Joe Watkins, of Voice of the Ex-Offender, attacked the president’s executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal service workers.
“What about the rest of us who don’t have jobs at all?” Watkins said. “How he can create jobs for us if they don’t bring us into the market?
J.R. Fleming, founder of Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, also criticized the president’s approach to helping the poor:
…a bunch of talk and rhetoric to give favor to a dying economy in America–and the reason why our economy is dying is the President’s approach is always to place blame…It’s not the 1 percent problem, it’s not the 99 percent problem, it’s an American problem, and the problem is patronage, nepotism and cronyism.
For their full reaction, watch the video above. It was produced by Rebel Pundit and runs about 5 minutes.
