Question !!!

Submitted by Keith Winston on Sat, 04/17/2010 - 18:12.

     

             I have a serious question. Have the summer jobs that used to help school kids have something to look foward to, something to hope for, something to help there struggling parents buy their school clothes, shoes.food, also take their self to a movie been all taken away and replaced by community service so no one can get paid that really need it for keeping our city clean? Have things been reversed to make prisoners and people given community service that have to pay for that!!!! clean and replace much needed summer jobs that kept alot of youth out of trouble, and taught responsibility through these programs?

 

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You raise a good issue - a concern of Congresswoman Fudge today

I went to the County Executive debate Congresswoman Fudge organized today - excellent idea and well executed - and I was most impressed with her. She spent a few minutes speaking to the audience, after the debate, sharing her concerns about prison reentry in Cuyahoga County and the fact that a very large percentage of our local population has prior felonies and so is largely unemployable.

So we have two problems here - you raise the issue we have too many prisoners who are doing work that would have been done by kids and low cost workers in the past, which sounds true. So the prison system is taking jobs away from the most needy in the community.

At the same time, a huge percentage of our needy community has prison records - they have the "work experience" - so they are barely employable... and they need to go back to prison to get the jobs they are best qualified to do.

Big problem, Keith - thanks for bringing it to my attention.

What to do about it? I suggested growing jobs for such people in prison and in the outside workforce in the local foods economy but folks here just don't get the big picture... and don't care about the little people.

Let's keep preaching!

Disrupt IT