Friday May 5, 2006
By Annika Carlson, Hope College and Ben Adler, Campus Progress
A powerful advocate for voting rights the urban poor, Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of the 11th District of Ohio is an important leader in today’s House of Representatives. Just three days ago she convinced a court in Ohio to force Cuyahoga County to keep its voting machines open later in the evening on primary day, because they were delayed in opening that day.
Tubbs Jones, the first African-American woman elected to represent Ohio in Congress, represents an urban district in Cleveland. Working closely with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), she has aggressively pushed leaders to identify and solve the problems with the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
As she puts it, “We cannot begin to heal from this tragedy until we have cleaned out our wounds. For us to heal we must continue to ask the hard questions and obtain adequate answers so that we can begin to learn from our mistakes.”
In an interview with Campus Progress, Tubbs Jones was her usual self: straight-forward and succinct. She commented on Katrina and Kanye, government accountability and wearing your own power color.
You’ve been very critical of the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. You said on television that if it had been a wealthier area, the response would have been swifter. Do you really think that the Bush administration is competent enough to handle a crisis like Hurricane Katrina well, even if it had hit, say, West Palm Beach ?
They handled what happened in New York. And no, it didn’t involve water, but people came to the aid and assistance. And if you look at New York six months after 9/11 and you look at Katrina—at the Gulf six months after… They were capable, but I don’t know if they had the will.
Ok—do you think then that Kanye West was right when he said that George Bush doesn’t care about black people?
That’s Kanye West’s perception—and my response was: it could be inferred from his conduct.
Some would say that the problem isn’t that, or isn’t just that, but that George Bush doesn’t care about poor people—or doesn’t care about people at all. So I was wondering how you would put it?
I would not say that George Bush doesn’t care about people at all. I think that his loyalties are to the upper class. And you can look at it by his policies—not only with regard to Katrina, but with regard to health care, with regard to business, with regard to the fact that he… hasn’t tried to increase the minimum wage when people are living in poverty making $5.25 an hour.
You’ve joined with the CBC to express concerns that the reports on Katrina, like the Davis report, don’t really adequately address the questions of responsibility and accountability. How should progressives go about trying to figure out exactly who in the federal government—and at every level of government—was responsible for which failures of Katrina and what can be done to prevent it again?
I think recent revelations about who’s in what bed and the like speak to the problems with what happened in the Gulf. I think we have to keep ratcheting up people’s knowledge of what has occurred, to go to the area and allow people to see what has happened and what has not happened. I think the federal government really should be supporting Louisiana and ensuring that every person from that area has an opportunity to vote on what will occur in the area. The government should be giving people from the area an opportunity to help rebuild it either through jobs or through businesses—giving them priority to help rebuild the area. I think they need to look at the pure policies to see if they work towards not allowing the community to be involved in the redevelopment, as well as the picture of opportunities to rebuild the area—why is it slow? Why do we have 11,000 or 15,000 trailers missing somewhere else when they ought to be in the region giving some people places to live? They, even six months later, have not figured out how do we help the people from the area get housing.
You represent parts of Cleveland, which is sort of the stereotypical old industrial city that has suffered a lot of population loss and loss of industry, and has started to rebound but still has a long way to come back. What do you think the federal government should be doing to assist old cities like Cleveland ?
A number of things, like providing greater support for education. The current administration has made the decision to cut dollars going to cities for like community development block grants, for various incentives to bring cities back. I think that there’s a low income housing tax credit that could be increased to provide for housing. In addition, this administration has made the decision to make cuts on infrastructure opportunities for cities that could be significant in bringing back cities; for example for Brownfield, because a lot of older industrial cities have a lot of manufacturing facilities that are either abandoned or so full of chemicals that they cannot be reused.
You recently introduced the Savings for Working Families Act, giving tax credits to financial institutions to create these Individual Development Accounts where low-income families can save and have their savings matched—what do you hope to accomplish with this legislation?
That legislation is focused on helping Americans understand the importance of savings, and getting them into where it becomes matter-of-fact, where savings becomes part of their financial activities. It’s real difficult when you don’t have any money. To say that you’re going to save—people don’t see the long-term impact, they’re looking at today versus six months or ten years down the line.
Why do you always wear red?
Red is a power color—I like red, first of all, but it also is a power color. And people say it compliments me well, that it is my color. I’m also a member of a sorority called Delta Sigma Theta and red is one of our colors.