The great recession is officially over.  But with overall unemployment now at 8.9 percent and 13.7 million people still out of work, the recovery has been painfully slow and has yet to make a significant visit to communities of color. 

The Labor Department’s February jobs report shows Black unemployment at 15.3 percent.  The rate is 16.2 percent for Black men and 11.6 percent for Hispanics.   Clearly, the jobs crisis persists in urban America and an immediate national response is long overdue.

In the past, our nation has declared war on poverty…war on drugs…even war on obesity. I call on Washington to declare war on unemployment, and the first line of defense must be urban America.