New Commission Aimed At Issues African American Males Face Meets
CITY HALL (CBS) -- Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney on Tuesday named the 30 members of the Commission on African American Males, which voters approved in a referendum on the primary election ballot.
Councilman Curtis Jones has a favorite analogy about the city's violent crime rate.
"If 300 dead whales washed up on the shore of the Delaware, every marine biologist in the world would come and try to figure out what the problem was."
Jones said the Commission will be the force that finally to the problems African American males face. Jones led the effort to get the Commission on the ballot, but its origins go back to 1991 when then-Mayor Wilson Goode created the concept with an executive order, though it never actually met until 2008.
Goode said he's delighted to see it become permanent.
"And as a permanent commission we have more power to do more things," Goode said.