In his address to Congress Tuesday, President Barack Obama said, “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

It sounds good. Will it happen? It’s very much up to us.

We live in a country that, until recently, floated on a bubble of consumer spending. Every time we ran up our credit cards, we made it a little easier to generate economic indicators (like the Gross Domestic Product) that said we were fine. We were producing and consuming. Who cares if we were also spending to excess, speculating on homes we couldn’t afford, and failing to save? We ignored those indicators, to our peril.

I say this not as a financial goody two shoes. Though I am lucky enough to have some savings and no debt RIGHT NOW, I have been tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt in the past. I learned that scrounging for change to buy lunch is not a fun way to live when you KNOW you could have had money in the bank if only you didn’t take that vacation, buy those shoes, and speculate on money you thought was coming in but didn’t. I had to learn that lesson dozens of humiliating times before I finally said, “I ain’t doin’ that no more.”

Of course, there are times when some of us are buying groceries off of credit cards, not because we are spending too much but because there seem to be no options. It for folks who have spent as wisely as they can and are still backed against the wall that we have to figure out how to rejigger this economy. How can we sort out how to help people who are trying their best and not just funnel the money into tax breaks for people who jacked us to begin with?

I believe the first thing to do is to read the news and to educate ourselves about the economics of the nation at large and of the communities we live in.

I’ll be posting some more on jobs and economics soon… a lot more. And you can read the full version of Obama’s speech here.

Rise Up, Stay Strong

On my way back from a long trip that included my stop in Detroit, I ended up watching the airplane movie. I hate airplane movies. They usually pick the worst thing that failed in the theatres and throw it on the screen 33,000 feet in the sky.

Then I saw Ice Cube, one of my favorite “blacktresses,” Tasha Smith, and this wonderful teen, who I found out was KeKe Palmer of “Akeelah and the Bee.” The movie is called The Longshots and it’s about a girl whose spirit-broken, ex-football star uncle (Cube) teaches her to be a Pop Warner football quarterback in a broke-down factory town. It sounds treacly, right? Well, I loved it. It’s a straight up feel good movie. And my favorite part is when the salty bar owner gives a speech about how no one is going to come rescue this town, but they can up their own game, clean up their own streets, and take some pride in who they are. This girl’s ambition helps lift folks up. Best of all, it’s a true story.

My Pollyanna side says we can make more of those true stories… the kind about people finding pride in their towns and their friends, family, and creative talents. Money pays the rent but it doesn’t make people happy. I believe that. Of course I’m hustling for mine, but we can either face the hard times with some heart or fall apart. We do have choices, even if they’re only how we react to the challenges at hand.