Wednesday, October 21, 2009
 

WASHINGTON DC — In what was clearly the most clever and interesting presser of the day, in a Wednesday full of press events, Yvette Clarke, the Brooklyn Congresswoman in the Major Ownens/Shirley Chisholm seat, scored big. She and new press sec Judith Kargbo did a beauty of a tie-in with constituents from her district and a press conference visual difficult to forget. The issue was immigration, the people from Clarke’s district were members of the clergy, adorned in their religious finest, from her district. Any time policy substance meets a strong visual the result is powerful. The large group of clergy put on a lobby day just by walking around from meeting to meeting on Capitol Hill.

Clarke’s district has many immigrants from Jamaica, Barbados, and Africa as well as a large African American population. Her event today served as a reminder of how those constituencies, primarily from the Caribbean, are completely ignored during the immigration debate which is focused primarily on Latinos. Further, the event spotlighted a bill by Chuck Schumer that ignores a key provision that would assist these constituencies. The disparity between the number of immigrants allowed into the United States who are black and the number allowed who aren’t is staggering.