Although it seems like only yesterday, six months have passed since last August when foreign-born student workers exposed the Hershey Company's abuse of the State Department's Summer Work Travel (SWT) program.

College students from Turkey, Moldova and China as well as other nations came at their own expense to work at Hershey allegedly to promote "lasting and meaningful relationships" with their American peers.

In reality, SWT turned out to be just another cheap labor program that allows multimillion dollar corporations to exploit unsuspecting workers. The disappointed students who came to the United States on J-1 visas spent last summer lifting 50 pound pallets of candy bars, often on the night shift, for small money.

Counting adults 18-64 who were laid off in the recent recession as well as single twenty-somethings still looking for jobs, the new working-age poor represent nearly 3 out of 5 poor people — a switch from the early 1970s when children made up the main impoverished group.

Take Charlotte, N.C., for example. It is a jewel of the “new South.” The largest financial center outside of New York City, it's the showcase for next year’s Democratic National Convention. It was a land of hope and opportunity for many blacks with a four-year college degree or higher.

According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, in Charlotte, N.C., the unemployment rate for African-Americans is 19.2 percent. If you add in people who have given up looking for jobs, that number exceeds 20 percent, which, according to economists Algernon Austin and William Darity, has effectively mired blacks in a depression.