The three young men repeatedly shouted, “We want jobs; we want jobs,” at me and a small group of community leaders as we stood talking to the press at the bus stop on 60th and Crenshaw. We were there to demand that the MTA beef up security on its buses in the area in the wake of the gunning down of a teen on the bus parked at that corner. But that didn’t mean anything to the three young men who accosted us and identified themselves as members of the Rollin 60s street gang. Their shout for jobs was real, palpable, and even unnerving. But it was more than justified.

The recent killing of 17 year-old Jamiel Shaw and wounding of 6 year-old Lavare Elzy has brought forth righteous howls from many African-Americans about the continuing plague of Latino on black violence. Many blacks even chalk up the attacks to “ethnic cleansing” campaign by anyone from the prison Mexican Mafia to violent on-the-street gang members. The much publicized crackdown on a Latino gang that unleashed a three year campaign to drive blacks out of a mixed neighborhood in South Los Angeles ripped open a dirty and very painful secret.

Two things happened on February 20 that heighten the urgency to make sure that the stimulus cash, our cash, is used to create jobs, jobs, and more jobs. And that African Americans in Los Angeles get a fair share of those jobs. That day President Barack Obama sternly lectured the nation’s mayors that he will call them out if they waste a penny of the stimulus relief money.

For a brief moment in the late 1990s there was a glimmer of hope that America’s incarceration juggernaut would slow down. The Sentencing Project which compiles an annual report on crime and punishment in the nation found a slight percentage drop in the incarceration rate in state prisons. That was due to a mix of better economic times, a slight up tick in drug and counseling and rehabilitation programs, and better community outreach by police departments. The thaw in the hard-line take no prisoner approach to crime and punishment didn’t last.