BLACK POLITICAL UNREST

WASHINGTON - Two Black members of Congress, one Democrat and the other Republican, are voicing concern today about circumstances facing the nation.

Black California Congresswoman Maxine Waters has some advice for President Obama about Blacks in America, "Pay more attention to us."

Speaking at a job fair in Atlanta today, Waters said unhappiness is growing in the Black community with the nation’s first Black president.

Waters said that she and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus are “not just frustrated with the president — communities are hurting.”

Earlier this week in Detroit, Waters said that members of the CBC are “getting tired” of continuing to support the president even as the economy continues to flounder, with the effects of a long-term recession magnified in many Black communities.

In a television interview Waters criticized the President's bus tour saying, "We don't know why on this trip that he's in the United States now, he's not in any Black community.”

“It’s time for us to step up and note that our communities are not being dealt with and to make sure that this administration understands that we cannot continue to go on this way,” she said. “Whatever the plan is that’s going to be unveiled in September, we intend to be a part of that. We have ideas. We want to include those in the plan that the president unveils. Here we are.”
 

Meanwhile, Black Florida Republican Congressman Allen West has started a firestorm of criticism following his appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" where he dubbed himself “The Modern day Harriet Tubman."

 As the CBC is leading a jobs tour across the country, the group's only Republican member, argued that Black Democrats have "consistently let down their constituencies" when it comes to unemployment.

West also said that Democrats have taken voter support for granted when election season rolls around.

The freshman Congressman singled out Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. saying that leaders like him were more likely to "bow to the demands of White liberals than to Black's needs."

West said that many black leaders were "no better than plantation bosses."

He added, “So I’m here as the modern day Harriet Tubman to kind of lead people on the Underground Railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility.”