Unemployment Protest In Harlem Tonight
NEW YORK - Tonight -- after the latest devastating jobs report is announced by the Department of Labor -- unemployed people, student activists, trade unionists and more will rally in front of the Harlem Jobs Center on West 125th St. at 5:30pm EST. The protesters will demand a new massive WPA-type jobs program to put millions of people back to work.
The Works Projects Administration was created 75 years ago, during the Depression of the 1930s. In the six years of its existence, more than 8 million unemployed people across the country were employed by the WPA to do various kinds of work.
The protest is being organized by the Jobs for All Committee and the Bail Out the People Movement.
It is being held in Harlem because the unemployment rate for African American and Latino/a youth is at least three times as large as the general rate. Some reports estimate the jobless rate of African American youths to be as high as 50 percent.
After demonstrating at the Harlem Jobs Center, protesters will march one block east on 125th St. to the Armed Forces Recruiting Station, at 55 West 125th St., to demand that the money being wasted on war be used to fund a real jobs program instead.
