By Ben Jealous

ConocoPhillips needs more than the disastrous approval it won from the Biden administration last week to proceed with its Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope. It needs $8 to $10 billion to build 199 wells, hundreds of miles of road and pipelines, a processing plant, and an airstrip on 499 acres that are vital to caribou, migratory birds and indigenous people.

While President Biden certainly could have stopped Willow, so can the financial institutions helping create it. Willow is just the most recent example of banks’ complicity in preserving fossil fuel extraction through a continuing flow of money to Big Oil and Gas — all despite pledging a year ago to pursue the net zero carbon emissions we need to save the planet.

That’s why I joined activists from Third Act Tuesday on a block in Washington to protest among the offices of banking giants Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, and Wells Fargo in our nation’s capital. Third Act is a group founded by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben to bring together Americans over 60 to campaign for a sustainable planet. While I’m still too young to join, I was part of demonstrations they organized at bank branches across the country.

We were there to call out these “dirty” banks’ practices and their unacceptable costs — both immediate and long-term. Right now, any money that goes to Willow and fossil fuel projects like it, is money that won’t be invested in a clean economy, particularly in fledgling companies that are finding sustainable ways to power the planet. It’s those jobs that Alaskans and their descendants really need.

Longer term, the banks’ lending will weaken the impact of an historic $370 billion investment our country will make in the next decade on green technology and alternatives to oil and gas. As those investments pay off, there will be less and less demand for oil coming from projects like Willow. But the supply will remain steady (for 30 years in Willow’s case). So, gas will be cheaper for the holdouts who continue to use it, making it even harder to push them to make the switch.

The situation got even more dire with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the shadow of doubt it unfairly cast on other regional banks. Banks of that size have been vital to the growth of the clean economy. For example, Silicon Valley reportedly financed 60% of community solar energy projects in which property owners jointly construct a solar facility to power their neighborhoods.

The consequence of the turmoil has been to concentrate even more power in the biggest banks. Bank of America, for example, took in close to $15 billion in new deposits in a matter of days after Silicon Valley was taken over by federal regulators.

That makes it even more imperative that we hold these banks to their pledges not to fund new fossil fuel projects (HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, is keeping that promise). Third Act has suggestions that most people can take to be part of that accountability — cut up credit cards issued by the banks and move deposits out of them, not into them. When more and more people do that, they will be strengthening the case of a small group of the banks’ investors who have begun introducing resolutions at shareholder meetings calling for an end to fossil fuel financing.

Throughout our country’s history, it’s been profitable to consider certain people and places as disposable. We know where continuing that unjust path will lead — to a planet that’s too polluted and too hot to be livable. We’ve passed the time when financial institutions can postpone an end to their investment in the climate’s demise. It’s time these dirty banks put their money somewhere else.

Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January

By Daisha Williams
Post News Group Intern

When Oakland School of the Arts students get a break from class, they frequently stop at their favorite hangouts for food and drinks in downtown Oakland, including three Black-owned spots, Dusk Coffee, Mama T’s, and Rare Blend Coffee.

Black-owned businesses tend to be hard to find because they are hard to keep around. However students at Oakland School for the Arts (OSA) help keep these businesses around by visiting so frequently.

A high schooler’s day is long, with eight hours of school, and for many, extracurricular activities after school. Caffeine is a much-needed energy boost for many students, and coffee is an easy, delicious, way to get it.

Both Dusk Coffee and Rare Blend Coffee get a significant amount of business from OSA students.

A rose latte is one of the appealing drinks that Oakland School for the Arts students buy at Dusk Coffee. Photo by Daisha Williams.

Rare Blend is a small cafe that sits on the corner in between the school and the parking lot on 19th street. There are tables and little booths inside, but students tend to prefer sitting outside in the alleyway in groups of six to eight, with a few at a time going inside to get drinks. In addition to coffee, Rare Blend offers small pastries and smoothies.

Dusk Coffee is a little farther away, on 16th street, but still incredibly easy for students to go to on their lunch break. There are many tables and chairs outside their cafe, so students often eat lunch here as well. The cafe is decorated in neutral colors, contrasting with Rare Blend’s colorful aesthetic. In this sense, Dusk is a very traditional coffee shop. In other ways it is incredibly unique, one example being their inclusion of fun menu items like their rose latte.

OSA’s high school students are able to go off campus for lunch and a popular spot for them is Mama T’s, named after the owner. Unlike many local restaurants, Mama T’s has been around for almost 15 years, so it has a long-standing reputation with OSA students.

While many small businesses shut down during 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions. Mama T’s was one of the few businesses that stayed open.

When asked about the pandemic affecting her restaurant, Mama T said, “It definitely impacted me, not only not having the school, but also the City Hall workers and everyone else. The thing that saved me was that I got a contract to make lunches for homeless people.”

Formerly known as Catered 2 U, after restrictions were lifted  the restaurant rebranded to Mama T’s, named after the owner. Located less than a block from OSA’s main entrance, the business has no seating area, just a kitchen and a counter.

Still, kids don’t mind standing as they wait for their food before going elsewhere. When asked about the amount of business they get from OSA students, Mama T replied, “Enough so that I created the OSA menu. There are several other schools in the area but I don’t do it for them because they come once every three or four months… I get students from OSA every single day.”

The OSA menu has specific meals for the students, as well as discounts on normal menu items. One menu item that is extremely popular with the students is their fries, which is featured on the OSA menu for only $3  a serving. Robert O’Grady, a junior at OSA said, “Their fries were legendary…. There’s no word to describe it, their fries were on everybody’s mind.”

Other popular menu items include their chicken nuggets and their “famous” fish sandwich.

William Truong, OSA’s student body president, called Mamma T’s “the place I go to treat myself to something good.”

If you’d like to visit, here are the addresses for all the places mentioned.

Mama T’s: 1711 Telegraph Ave

Rare Blend Cafe: 555 19th St

Dusk Coffee: 1615 Broadway

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

America’s employers added 311,000 jobs last month, surpassing the 208,000 experts predicted.

Further, the last two years saw more jobs created since 1940, a sign that the country has recovered soundly from the COVID-19 recession.

In January, employers added 504,000 jobs, and then 300,000+ last month, robust gains that pointed to high demand for labor.

However, despite the solid report, the African American job market remained problematic.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall unemployment rate rose to 3.6% in February from 3.4% the prior month.

Women over 20 saw an unemployment rate slightly rise to 3.2% from 3.1%.

Unemployment rates for Black women climbed to 5.1% from 4.7%.

Among Hispanic women, it jumped to 4.8% from 4.4%.

The Black unemployment rate peaked at 5.7%, up from 5.4% in January.

But, President Biden said he was excited about overall progress.

“I’m happy to report that our economy has created over 300,000 new jobs last month, and that’s on top of a half a million jobs we added the month before,” a celebratory President Joe Biden exclaimed.

“All told, we’ve created more than 12 million jobs since I took office, nearly 800,000 of them manufacturing jobs.

“That means, overall, we’ve created more jobs in two years than any administration has created in the first four years.”

Biden said he believes his administration’s economic plan is working.

The President asserted that when he took office, the economy was reeling.

“And 18 million people were unemployed, on unemployment insurance, compared to less than 2 million today,” he stated.

“Unemployment was 6.3 percent, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted it wouldn’t get below 4 percent until 2026.

“Because of our economic plan, unemployment has been below 4 percent for 14 straight months since January 2022.”

In February, the unemployment rate remained near the lowest level in a half-century.

“That’s really good news. People who were staying out of the job market are now getting back into the job market,” the President noted.

“They’re coming off the sidelines. They’re getting back into the job market. And today’s job numbers are clear: Our economy is moving in the right direction.”

Biden declared that jobs are available, and Americans are working again and becoming more optimistic about the future.

He called right-wing Republicans the biggest threat to America’s economic recovery.

“The reckless talk, my MAGA friends. This is not your — as you’ve heard me say, it’s not your father’s Republican party,” Biden railed.

“But the Republicans in the United States Congress, what they want to do with regard to the debt limit. You know, they’re threatening to default on our national debt. Planning to default, as some Republicans seem to be doing, puts us much at risk.”

He continued:

“I believe we should be building on our progress, not go backward. So, I urge our extreme MAGA Republican friends in Congress to put the threats aside. Instead, join me in continuing the progress we’ve built. We’ve got a lot more to do, so let’s finish the job.”