On August 28 the Arlington Green Party sponsored a workshop on unemployment rights and benefits advocacy along with several Arlington faith communities, a union, and a George Mason University graduate students organization.

A panel comprised of Christian Dorsey, legislative director of the Economic Policy Institute, Christian Jones, assistant director of the Arlington Employment Center, and Jon Liss, executive director of the Alexandria Tenants and Workers United, spoke about the situation facing unemployed people in the U.S., Virginia, and Northern Virginia. After the panel, attendees discussed needed improvements in public jobs, unemployment insurance benefits and other assistance to the roughly 80,000 people who are unemployed in Northern Virginia currently.

A follow up meeting to schedule advocacy and specific programs will be held on Sept. 18, 2010, 10 AM, at the Arlington Central United Methodist Church (4201 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203).

On August 26 Arlington Greens Audrey Clement and John Reeder filed a motion to stop construction of a 1.5 mile extended merge lane on westbound I-66 between Fairfax Drive and Sycamore Street. VDOT has completely torn up the left shoulder and Metrorail retaining wall along that stretch of road, despite the fact that Clement and Reeder have an appeal pending with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the April 30, 2010 dismissal of their case in federal district court. Clement and Reeder view VDOT’s decision to proceed with construction before the Fourth Circuit has reviewed the case as just another example of VDOT’s contempt for the courts and environmental laws.

Arlington Greens Propose a Green Jobs Program for Unemployed

A group of Arlington Greens has been working with unemployed and homeless individuals in Arlington for the past 12 months. Their demands are a year round homeless shelter for adult men and women. They also want a public jobs program paying a living wage, so that the homeless can afford to move out of shelters into their own apartments and rebuild their lives.

Arlington Green Party leaders met several months ago with Arlington County Government officials, Congressman Jim Moran’s staff, and Senators Warner and Webb. They presented a paper proposing a $10 million program to employ up to 200 unemployed persons in green jobs that would weatherize and upgrade low income housing and public properties in Arlington (see attached paper on this website). Arlington County officials indicated they were interested in administering the program if federal funds could be obtained.

In June 2010, Greens learned that the State of Virginia had nearly $50 million in federal TANF Stimulus Funds that could be used for such a jobs program, but the State of Virginia Department of Social Services has prevented localities from using these funds. Right now these funds will probably go unused and be returned to the U.S. Government by September 30. Most other states have used their funds to create jobs-Pennsylvania, for example, but not Virginia!

It is pure insanity not to use all of the $50 million available to Virginia to create jobs-green jobs or any other type of job that does a social service to the community and provides training and a living wage to the unemployed. Is it the rigid anti-worker ideology of the Democrats and the Republicans in Virginia state government that has led to this stupidity or is it downright imcompetence?