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UPDATE: (01/25/12) CoC Applauds Obama's Decision to Investigate Wall St Banks, Continues to Push for Accountability

Today President Obama received a letter from ColorOfChange and our partners urging the administration to hold Wall Street accountable. The letter states that an investigation is essential to hold the big banks accountable or their role in the housing crisis and to prevent future reckless behavior from the banking and mortgage industries.

We’ll be listening for any remarks regarding this and other ColorOfChange campaigns tonight as President Obama gives the State of the Union address. Follow us on twitter @ColorofChange and please share your reactions using #BSOTU as we work to address critical issues that impact all of us.

The Labor Department released its December jobs report today. Predictably, media coverage has been optimistic, focusing on the 200,000 jobs added by the private sector, the nation's lowest unemployment level in nearly three years, and the improving condition of small businesses. 

All good news right? But buried between the lines is a different story about Black America and the labor market.

Today we launched a campaign calling on President Obama and Attorney General Holder to stand up to big banks and push for a full investigation of those responsible for the foreclosure crisis that devastated Black wealth. Check out the email we sent to our more than 800,000 members today and join the campaign here.

As we reported last week, Black unemployment was up in November despite news that joblessness overall is on the decline. A recent New York Times report offers some clues as to what's going on.

Long before public sector jobs were placed on the chopping block by Republican governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich, they were the path to the middle class for many African Americans. Long before Congressional Republicans decided that government jobs don't count as real work, they were how we bought homes and sent children to college. Now they're under attack. And by extension, so are Black families.

In what's been called hopeful economic news, the nation’s unemployment rate dropped to 8.6% in November. While the new unemployment figures may make for good headlines, they ring hollow to the 14 million people currently out of work. Black Americans are hit nearly twice as hard as the rest of the nation.

According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, 15.5% of Black people were unemployed last month. This was a slight increase from October, when unemployment in the Black community stood at 15.1%. The unemployment rate in November was 7.6% among Whites and 11.4% among Latinos. The unemployment rate for African-American teenagers hovers around a staggering 40%.

As the second month of Occupy Wall Street got off the ground, artist Jasiri X and director Paradise Gray set powerful images to a hip hop beat—bringing a familiar tone to a movement some people of color are tuning out. It's easy to look at images of predominately White protestors taking to the streets and reports of missteps and wonder whether Occupy Wall Street is really welcoming or relevant to Black people.

Challenging our financial system may be a new rally call for some of OWS participants, but Black folks can point to generations of intimate experiences with economic injustice and a deep knowledge of movement building. Can the movement channel this knowledge?