Government working together with civic society can reverse the damage to small businesses caused by the COVID lockdowns, as well as other problems in American society, according to two former Trump administration officials.
Ja’Ron Smith and Chris Pilkerton discussed the problems facing poor communities, such as crime, drugs, and the loss of jobs overseas, in an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”
Mr. Smith served as deputy director of the Office of American Innovation, and Mr. Pilkerton served as acting head of the Small Business Administration.
They are also the authors of the new book, “Underserved: Harnessing the Principles of Lincoln’s Vision for Reconstruction for Today’s Forgotten Communities.”
President Abraham Lincoln was known to have been an avid reader and a learned man, but he grew up on a prairie without education, Mr. Pilkerton said.
“The reality was that he was fighting for folks like him when he was running for Congress and running for elected positions,” he said. “When he actually went through the Civil War, he saw this as an opportunity to reconstruct America to bring economic opportunity for all.”
President Lincoln’s vision for bringing America together was not continued by his successor after his assassination, Mr. Smith said. Instead, after his death, the policies enacted lead to the Jim Crow era and segregation.
Economic Destruction
In the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, jobs started to move overseas, and finding a job became more difficult. This coincided with globalization and the erosion of the church, together with incentives from the government to discourage the formation of families, Mr. Smith said.Because of that, drug abuse, crime, and other ills became rampant in America. The COVID lockdowns further exacerbated the situation, with many small businesses closing permanently and the job market becoming even tighter, he said.
Mr. Smith tried to use this period of upheaval to build something good, with an idea similar to President Lincoln’s, but he and his team were not able to convince other politicians about their plan.
Mr. Pilkerton mentioned that there were efforts from the Trump administration, where the president and cabinet members were involved, such as a public-private convention for the creation of new jobs.
This happened with President Donald Trump talking to CEOs in the “Pledge to American Workers” program, and asking them to create opportunities, apprenticeships, and more job openings, which lead to “16 million jobs that have been identified for training,” Mr. Pilkerton said.
This demonstrates that public-private partnerships can be a good thing if done efficiently and if these types of programs continue, Mr. Pilkerton said.
Mr. Smith said they are advocating for the creation of a framework for opportunity. But the key word is opportunity, something completely different from being taken care of, he said.
Given an opportunity, you have to “step into it,” he said. “You have to take that opportunity and then actualize it yourself.”
This infrastructure is aiming to primarily help people from underserved communities experiencing financial, family, and other problems, so they can have some support and not lose hope in life, Mr. Smith said.
The government can see what works for different communities, whether rural or urban, and can then increase the opportunities that can be given, so that no child from a dysfunctional family environment is left without an opportunity to overcome his or her challenges, whether this will be with the much-needed help of a mentor, people from the civic community, or opportunities for work, which the government has helped to create.
Bringing a Different Perspective
Mr. Smith said that he grew up as an African American child in Cleveland, Ohio, and he never thought that he would end up working in the administration of a Republican president. He then realized that his background allowed him to bring a different perspective to his work in the White House.For example, he worked on the negotiations between the police and progressive organizations that lead to President Trump’s criminal justice reform initiative, the First Step Act, which aims to improve public safety and reduce the jail population.
This First Step Act was passed by a bipartisan coalition in Congress.
“That’s the funny thing about life. You don’t know where ... or when or why God kind of created an avenue for you, and then it clicks, like ‘Oh, this is why that happened,'” Mr. Smith said.
“We have to be intentional ourselves about being the change that we want to see in the world,” he said, because “there’s no time to waste.”
After leaving the administration and having his own children, Mr. Smith said he realized the importance of the work he did even more.
“We want to see our country being passed on to our children and be even better than what we had.”