Moments before a meeting with President Barack Obama focused on the National Urban League’s Job Initiative, the organization’s President and CEO Marc Morial delivered a rousing address during Thursday’s Broadband Adoption Luncheon at the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council’s 9th Annual Access to Capital and Telecommunications Policy Conference.

“America is in crisis today when it comes to our economy,” he said.  “We are continuing to weather the greatest economic crisis the nation has faced since the great depression.  So no discussion – not debt ceilings, not debt reduction, not telecommunications policy, not tax policy – should be done in isolation from the essential question:  Will it create jobs?  Not hypothetically, not rhetorically, not on a spin sheet or talking point, but will it really, really create jobs and economic opportunity.”  He then challenged those in attendance to make jobs and economic opportunity a central feature of their work.

Seeing broadband as an economic catalyst and job creator for minority communities, Morial later reflected on the National Urban League’s recent support of the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile Merger.

“It’s always fair to criticize what people think and what people do,” he said.  “What probably got under my skin more than anything was this idea, or this notion, that civil rights organizations should have no voice in such a transaction, that somehow we’re supposed to limit ourselves to a set of preordained issues that others ordain. 

Click here to read the full article on Politic365.