by Abdul-Hakim Shabazz
Well, it’s not every day I get asked to leave a political event where the public is invited, but Sunday was one of those days. The Joe Hogsett Mayoral campaign held a “jobs fair” at Marian University. The point of it was for Joe to go into more details about his plans to put a few thousand teens to work next year should he become Mayor.
As you all know I am all for putting people to work, because when a person has a job, he or she is a lot less likely to break into my place and take my stuff.
So there I was at the Physical Ed Center at Marian University, when I got a call from Hogsett’s campaign spokesman telling me the event was not open to media. I thought that was odd, especially since the campaign was asking parents to sign waivers so their kids’ images could be used in “promotional literature”. So I asked the spokesman instead of being there as media, what if I stayed as someone who was interested in getting information on job opportunities for his nephew who happens to be one of those unemployed young black men that everyone talks about these days. No such luck.
So instead being my usual annoying self I decided to leave. I would have loved to stayed and heard how many businesses Joe has lined up for his summer jobs plan, what makes his plan different from the one that the Ten Point Coalition announced last week that already has a funding component to it to help find jobs for youth in the city’s six highest crime neighborhoods or for that matter what’s different than what Greg Ballard’s administration is currently doing with its 40 different partners that employed about 40,000 youth last year. But like I said, no such luck.
Oh well, that’s life in the big city, some days you get your job done other days you just have to wait until you get to your numerous media platforms to share your thoughts.
Abdul-Hakim is the editor and publisher of IndyPolitics.Org. You can reach him at abdul@indypolitics.org.
