Career Center News Obama: Private, public sectors must create jobs AZ career centers see crush of job seekers Medical program seeks diverse MS students Ready to hire? You have many employee options Specials Recommended @ Amazon: The Purpose Linked Organization: How Passionate Leaders Inspire Winning Teams and Great Results   Alliances Meet more IMDiversity Employment Opportunity Network allies

Career Center News

By The Associated Press

Future of feminism an issue in NOW leadership vote

By DAVID CRARY

AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- After years on the defensive during the Bush administration, the National Organization for Women is elated to have a president sharing many of its goals. Yet NOW heads into its own leadership contest -- a sharp contrast of age and race -- mindful of the need to energize its ranks.

Kim Gandy, a savvy former prosecutor, is stepping down as NOW president after eight years leading the battle against many Bush-era policies.

The election to succeed her, set for NOW's three-day national conference starting Friday in Indianapolis, is both an unusual clash of generations and an opportunity for activists to confront some of the challenges facing the feminist movement.

Delegates will be choosing between Latifa Lyles, a 33-year-old African-American who has been one of Gandy's three vice presidents, and Terry O'Neill, 56, a white activist who taught law at Tulane University, who was NOW's vice president for membership from 2001-05, and who most recently has been chief of staff for a county council member in Maryland's Montgomery County.

The two have waged a polite campaign but are aware of the contrasts. Lyles would be NOW's youngest president ever; O'Neill one of the oldest at the start of a term.

Gandy speaks respectfully of O'Neill, but she has enthusiastically endorsed Lyles.

"It's hard to ignore the fact there's been a generational shift in the country, and an organization that doesn't recognize that is living in the past," Gandy said. "Latifa's youth is not a detriment, but an advantage. ... She'll take NOW to a different level."

Yet one of NOW's three current vice presidents -- Olga Vives -- is backing O'Neill, as are former NOW president Patricia Ireland and many other NOW regional leaders.

Both contenders expect the election to be close, and both are promoting themselves as best able to bolster NOW's membership.

"We are not the strongest grass-roots movement we can be -- we both agree on that," Lyles said. "The question is how we deal with that."

Noting that she contrasts with NOW's mostly white and over-40 membership, Lyles said she could help give NOW a new image of youth and diversity that would appeal to younger feminists and reinvigorate the broader movement.

"The profile of NOW is just as important as the work we do," she said. "There are a lot of antiquated notions about what feminism is."

O'Neill, in turn, says she has the edge over Lyles in regard to grass-roots organizing and membership recruitment.

"I keep hearing `Terry, I want to see more activism in my community,"' O'Neill said. "The press releases, the media exposure, invitations to the White House -- these are excellent things, but they're not enough. The grass roots are not personally engaged."

Like many feminists, O'Neill said she is still celebrating Barack Obama's election as president -- and his appointments of numerous veterans of the women's movement to key posts in his administration.

"But even with a friend in the White House and a lot of friends in the Congress, it's going to take well-organized, grass-roots movement to advance our agenda," O'Neill said.

That agenda -- more or less common to both tickets -- includes ensuring that women's needs are taken into account in health care reform and economic recovery initiatives. Feminists also bristle at continuing opposition to steps that would make birth control and abortion more accessible.

Ireland, NOW's president from 1991 to 2001, says she is backing O'Neill -- and serving as campaign treasurer -- based largely on an assessment of the candidates' tactical skills.

"There is a role that requires us to take unpopular stands and push on our friends," Ireland said. "That's what I think Terry really gets. She's the one I believe will be very willing to use a wide array of tactics -- not just traditional letters and e-mails, but also engage in civil disobedience, organize fasts, be at some congressman's district office."

However, Jessica Valenti, a prominent younger feminist who has been following the NOW campaign, says her contemporaries would be far more excited if Lyles triumphs over O'Neill.

"I never paid attention to a NOW election in my life until I knew Latifa was running," said Valenti, 30, founder and executive editor of the popular blog Feministing.com.

"This could be the moment where NOW becomes super-relevant to the feminist movement again," Valenti said. "NOW has done amazing work over the years. But younger feminists, online feminists -- we haven't had a lot of connections with them."

"When you think of NOW, you think of white middle-class feminism -- 70s feminism," Valenti added. "A lot of younger women are tired of seeing the same kind of leadership over and over. ... They're getting excited about smaller, local feminist organizations, more youth-led, doing more cutting-edge work."

Overall, NOW says it has more than 500,000 "contributing members" -- who are either paying membership dues at present or did so recently enough to stay on the mailing list. Gandy said there's been a recent dip in membership revenues, but it's modest enough so far that NOW has been able to avoid the staff layoffs occurring at many other nonprofits.

Gandy, 55, chuckled during a telephone interview when it was noted that both candidates to succeed her are promising to improve NOW's grass-roots outreach.

"Every candidate is going to say that," she said, recalling similar promises of her own. "The reality is that people who vote are from the grass roots, and every candidate is going to say `You're going to get more attention from us."'

Gandy was an early and passionate supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primary campaign, but shifted firmly into the Obama camp when he won the nomination and remains a fan of his.

"There's no question that most progressives are giving President Obama some space to do the things he promised to do," Gandy said. "That doesn't mean that NOW's pressure on the Congress or state legislatures is unnecessary. ... You have to keep raising the issues, keep them in front of people."

------

On the Net:

NOW: http://www.now.org/

Ore. jobless rate hits record 12.4 percent

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Oregon's unemployment rate has hit a record 12.4 percent, but state economists say there are some favorable trends in May's job statistics.

The State Employment Department said Monday the monthly jobless rate is the highest since the state began keeping statistics in a comparable format in 1976. The record previously was 12.1 percent in November 1982.

The department said the rise in joblessness has slowed in the past two months, after several months of increases of about a percentage point a month.

And, the department said, the number of jobs lost in May was the smallest in the last 10 months.

Study cites losses in SE Mich manufacturing jobs

DETROIT (AP) -- A regional planning agency says the automotive industry's restructuring has cut the number of manufacturing jobs in southeast Michigan by nearly half since 2000.

The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments says employment in the transportation equipment manufacturing industry, comprising vehicle and parts manufacturing, has fallen by 59 percent alone.

The report released Friday says the seven-county region has lost more than 446,000 hourly and salary jobs -- an 18 percent decline in employment.

The bankruptcies of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC are expected to increase the unemployment in the region; the seasonally unadjusted jobless rate in the Detroit-Warren-Livonia labor market was 13.6 percent in April.

SEMCOG says total job losses are expected to top 11,000 in the region's auto assembly, stamping and powertrain plants.

------

Information from: The Detroit News, http://www.detnews.com

Study: Jobs in fledgling green sector growing

By CHRIS KAHN and SANDY SHORE

NEW YORK (AP) -- The fledgling renewable energy industry has grown steadily over much of the past decade, adding jobs at more than twice the national rate, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released Wednesday.

Solar and wind-power companies, energy-efficient light bulb makers, environmental engineering firms and others expanded their work force by 9.1 percent from 1998 to 2007, the latest year available, according to Pew.

The average job growth in all industries was 3.7 percent during the same period.

The entire energy sector has experienced growth in recent years as well, according to the Bureau of Labor. Bureau data shows coal mining jobs jumped 16 percent from 2003 to 2009. Oil and gas extraction jobs jumped 28 percent.

The Pew study does not include employment data from the past 18 months, a volatile period for the energy industry.

Since the data was collected, the government has said it would pump billions into renewable energy and efficiency programs. The banking meltdown made it nearly impossible to raise cash and oil prices have collapsed.

Alternative energy companies have been hit hard by the recession, with a string of bankruptcies in the ethanol industry and layoffs in the wind-power industry.

Lori Grange, Pew's interim deputy director, said that while green industries will certainly benefit from the influx of billions in stimulus dollars, the report shows that the clean energy sector has proven itself sustainable.

States like California, Texas, Florida, and New York continue to employ the most people in the industry. However, states experiencing the largest growth rates were Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming, according to the report.

North Dakota, among the states with the fewest number of clean energy jobs, saw a growth rate of 31 percent from 1998 to 2007.

Michigan, which has lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, saw a 10.7 percent increase in clean energy jobs from 1998 to 2007.

That is not to say that clean energy jobs have kept pace with overall job losses.

Pew counted 22,674 clean energy jobs in Michigan in 2007. To put that into perspective, Michigan lost 38,400 jobs in April alone.

Many of the new manufacturing jobs do not pay as well as traditional union jobs, either, yet workers who have made the shift say the industries are moving in different directions.

One cast off from the auto industry is Bob Mamo, 50, who was director of business development for a Dearborn, Mich., auto parts supplier until he was laid off in November. He was in the industry for 20 years.

Last month, he landed a job as vice president of manufacturing for Free Flow Power, a hydropower company based in Gloucester, Mass.

The auto industry "just looked like it was going in the wrong direction," he said. "Green energy is definitely on the upswing. Green energy was what I was really after."

Liesl Clark, deputy director for Michigan's Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, said the state is doing what it can to help manufacturers shift operations to supply parts for wind turbines, such as gear boxes and drive trains.

For its study, Pew used private jobs data that included information about employers, and Pew researchers spent nearly a year determining which ones could be considered part of the clean energy economy.

"Our numbers are probably conservative," said Kil Huh, who directed the study. "If we couldn't identify as part of green energy, it wasn't part of our count."

The Pew jobs data was dominated by environmental engineering firms and other pollution cleanup specialists that have been around for years. But the report showed that the fastest growing areas include companies that make hybrid diesel buses, traffic monitoring software, liquid biofuels, and jobs related to solar and wind energy.

"The explosive growth is really in clean energy," Huh said.

------

Associated Press Writer Tali Arbel contributed to this story.

Other Recent Readings of Interest

• Last Weekend Supplement: Green Jobs Growing

Previous Edition's Headlines

• Read All

Also of Interest

• Main News Headlines by the AP from IMDiversity.com's Multicultural Villages
• Your Weekly Horoscope

[Back to Top]

[Back to IMDiversity Career Center Home]

[Add IMDiversity Career Center to your IE Favorites]