photo by steed media service

The first ever African American chairman of the House Judiciary Committee stood outside the Detroit Automotive Symposium, a towering pillar of African American consciousness, and provided a sobering and somber assessment of domestic auto manufacturing — especially as its ramifications impact an economically depressed state of Michigan.

“What Jesse Jackson is doing at this conference this year is particularly sensitive. It’s just different from other years, because this industry is in inner turmoil,” says U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., outside the Detroit Yacht Club. “The industry is trying to catch up with all its competitors around the world. This thing has accelerated to a global dimension much more rapidly than any of us who knew it was coming, could have foreseen.”

The congressman from Detroit joins U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. (Harlem), who is the first African American chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, as minority leaders of colossally important committees.

“We [in the Judiciary Committee] have the most awesome jurisdiction in the Congress. We’re responsible for determining the oversight and the operations of the Constitution and the 27 Articles to the Constitution, and any proposals for any new constitutional amendments,” he says. “We’re trying to make this system work.”

After Democrats regained control of Congress after 12 years, Conyers says the campaign to make the American judicial system fair and equal is a challenging, arduous task. “It keeps us busy. We’ve been greatly concerned with issues like [the] politicization of the Department of Justice.” - terry shropshire

View the entire interview live on www.rollingout.com/tv.

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