This presentation, given at the RAISE Florida Network 2013 First Quarter Regional Meeting, gives information on organizing meetings and talking points for successful asset-building discussions with state legislators.

This presentation, given at RAISE Florida Network's 2013 First Quarter Annual Meeting, discusses strategies for identifying and engaging legislators in order to promote an asset-building agenda.

Vice President Joe Biden had tough words for lawmakers who’ve tried to limit voting rights Tuesday, warning that they may ruin their chances of winning minority voters.

“If they keep this up you can be assured, minorities of all stripes will never vote for anyone who makes it more difficult for them to exercise right to vote,” Biden said in a speech at the annual gala for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

“To me it is the most immoral, callous thing that can be done, the idea of making it more difficult to vote,” he said, without specifically naming Republicans, but appearing to make a thinly veiled warning to the party that has been behind the vast majority of voter suppression efforts in recent years.

He lamented the recent debate over Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, pointing out that one-time Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond eventually supported the measure in his career.

Biden called it “an irony” that “just a few years after electing the first African American president in the history of the United States of America,” more than 80% of states in the U.S. introduced or passed 180 laws that “make it more difficult for minorities to vote.”

Read more at MSNBC.

Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday bashed voting rights requirements — calling them “immoral, callous” — and warned of political consequences for those who try to impose barriers to casting a ballot.

“To me it is the most immoral, callous thing that can be done, the idea of making it more difficult to vote,” Biden said at the annual gala dinner of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a minority-focused public policy organization.

The vice president pointed to data indicating that in 2011 and 2012 at least 180 bills in 41 states were introduced that aimed to stiffen requirements for voting — voter identification measures, for example.

“If there’s one thing people who want to restrict the vote didn’t understand, they didn’t understand what it means when you tell someone, ‘I’m going to make it difficult for you to vote,’” Biden said, appearing to take a swipe at Republicans. “It means, and I was certain and Barack and I talked about it, you did too, that it guaranteed people would show. The more they attempt to restrict the right of minorities, the greater the determination and the stronger the will to turn out, and that’s exactly what everyone saw in 2012.”

Read more at Politico.

Vice President Joe Biden praised U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice on the eve of congressional hearings over last year's deadly terror attack against a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya - a controversy in which Rice found herself buried deep only days later.

Describing her as one of the “brightest, most accomplished” people he’s ever met, Biden said he’s never seen a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. “who has more ability to promote the interests of the United States of America.”

“When she speaks…no one wonders whether or not she is speaking for the president,” the vice president said at a gala for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which honored Rice with an award Tuesday night.

Read more at CNN.

The night before a House committee hearing on the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Vice President Biden praised Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador who has been under fire for her role in the administration’s response to the incident.

Rice has “the absolute, total, complete confidence of the president,” Biden said at a gala for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, according to press reports. “When she speaks… no one wonders whether or not she is speaking for the president.”

Read more at The Washington Post.

Minorities clinging to the middle class have come out of the Great Recession at a higher risk for falling into poverty during the next economic crisis, according to a recent report by the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

The report titled, Making Sure Money Is Available When We Need It, noted that over the past 30 years, household risk exposure increased for many Americans, following the crash of the saving and loan industry in 1989, the rise and fall of the tech bubble in 2000, and most recently the collapse of housing market in 2007 that led to the Great Recession.

Households have experienced more wealth volatility since the late 1980s because there has been more risk in the market and because they have been increasingly exposed to those risks, said the report.

The study found that was 27 percent of non-White households were at “very high risk” of exposure compared to 22.7 percent for Whites. The report also said that: “The risk exposure for nonwhite households, has grown faster than the risk exposure for white families.”

Household wealth — a family’s asset-to-debt ratio — was a determining factor on a families’ ability to weather the next economic disaster and limit their exposure to financial ruin.

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For many American families, homeownership had been the key to gaining a strong foothold in the middle class and for many families in the Black community its still one of the safest assets to own. The deluge of subprime mortgages, not an inability to afford a home, changed that.

“African Americans were targeted more for subprime loans they didn’t do anything risky like start buying stocks instead of mutual funds but they wound up holding what were riskier investments by virtue of the way the housing market works, said Wilhelmina Leigh, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a group that works to improve the socioeconomic status of African Americans and other people of color.

Read more at BlackVoiceNews.com.

Among U.S. workers, nearly 90 percent of Americans employed in K-12 and higher education actively save for their retirement compared to 59 percent of all American workers. In Retirement Confidence in the Education Sector: Comparisons by Race, a collaboration between the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the TIAA-CREF Institute, the report presents both similarities and disparities in how Black and White education workers fare with planning and managing their retirement savings.

Among education sector employees, 87 percent of African-Americans and 88 percent of Whites save for their retirement. In addition, the report discloses that nearly 80 percent of the respective groups are confident they are investing their savings properly and close to 70 percent of the groups are confident they will have enough money to live comfortably during retirement. A majority in each group say that they are confident they will not outlive their savings and approximately half have calculated how much they actually need to save to achieve this goal, according to the report.

“Building on their established base of solid savings behavior, however, the education workforce is more likely than the U.S. workforce overall to achieve the goal of a financially comfortable retirement,” the report states.

“I think overall [the report is] meaningful because it shows that in one sector, African-Americans and Whites are equally likely to be savers, or to say that they currently save, and that’s not true in all employment sectors,” said Dr. Wilhelmina Leigh, the report’s author and a Joint Center senior research associate.

“I think that’s worth noting,” she added, noting that the study grew out of discussions Leigh had with TIAA-CREF officials after she became a TIAA-CREF Institute fellow in early 2012. The Washington-based Joint Center conducts research and policy analysis on topics of concern to African-Americans and other racial minorities.

“There is something at work within the education sector environment that may not be at work in other sectors that may have fostered this particular outcome” of high rates of retirement savings confidence, she says.

Read the entire article at Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

WASHINGTON, DC – The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research and policy institution that focuses on the concerns of African Americans and other people of color, announced today that Vice President Joe Biden will address its Annual Gala Dinner on Tuesday, May 7 at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington, D.C.

Under the banner – “Jobs. Partnerships. Progress.” – the event is an opportunity for elected officials, business, civic and community leaders from across the country to celebrate the rise of African Americans in the nation’s political and civic life.  More than 500 people are expected to be in attendance.

“We are thrilled that the Vice President will address our Annual Gala Dinner, especially with employment,  job creation, and voting rights at the core of our research agenda,” said Joint Center Board of Governors Chair Cynthia G. Marshall.  

The Vice President’s remarks will take place as the Joint Center honors Ambassador Susan E. Rice, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, with its 2013 Louis E. Martin Great American Award, which is given annually to an exemplar of change, progress and coalition-building across racial lines.

“As the Administration’s point person on rebuilding our economy, Vice President Biden has valuable insights on efforts to spur job creation and economic opportunity in our communities,” said Ralph B. Everett, the Joint Center’s President and CEO.

At the event, the Joint Center will also honor the Congressional Black Caucus with its Partnership Award, which recognizes efforts to build strategic relationships within the realm of public policy to expand hope, opportunity and progress in minority and underserved communities across the country.

Read the entire press release by clicking the icon below.