----- Original Message ----- From: Doug Henwood To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 8:05 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Class Action: The Million Worker March, October 17
Yoshie Furuhashi quoted:
>The Black commentator
Who, by the way, thinks that voting for Kerry is an imperative, expressed in very very strong terms <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#040930>.
Doug ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hmmm... I'm not sensing that from what this says. It sounds more like they'll vote for Kerry and then look for a place to vomit.
Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at yahoo.com ~~~~~~~~~~
"The DLC, formed in the mid-1980s to suppress the voices of Blacks and labor in the party - and as a direct reaction to the hugely successful Black voter registration drives that accompanied Rev. Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns - is determined to keep organized Black America at arms length, and broke.
Should Kerry win, traditional Black leadership will be declared irrelevant. As Freedom Rider columnist Margaret Kimberley wrote on September 30: "The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Leadership Council will crow that their dubious strategies were in fact brilliant. Their claims should not go unchallenged.""
The Black Commentator - Black Anger, White Money - A Crisis for Black Leadership - Issue 109 The Black Commentator Issue 109 - October 14 2004 www.blackcommentator.com/109/109_cover_campaign_pf.html www.blackcommentator.com
"It's insulting that none of us who have been responsible for most registration and turnout are at the table determining priorities." - Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
"There is something wrong when groups who have closed the gap on enfranchisement with our track record and our history of protecting the vote are not getting funding." - Melanie L. Campbell, Executive Director, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP)
"There appears to be a dedicated campaign by the party leadership, the Kerry campaign and now ancillary funding organizations to build some political distance between themselves and key traditional leaders of the party base." - Political scientist Ron Walters, board member, NCBCP
Whatever happens on November 2, traditional African American leadership faces a crisis of historic proportions, a day of reckoning that has been approaching for more than three decades. Having virtually shut down the activist wing of the Civil Rights/Black Power Movement in favor of electoral and broker politics at the dawn of the Seventies, Black leadership now finds itself blackballed from the $200 million-plus soft money Democratic campaign feast. Essentially, they have been sidelined from the only mass action game they chose to play.
Instead, 527 outfits jump-started by super-rich, Bush-averse benefactors like George Soros (net worth: $8 billion) dominate the street action in Black precincts throughout the 17 campaign "battleground" states. Paying $8 to $12 an hour for door-to-door canvassers, the New Jack 527s have supplanted (usurped might be a better word) the electoral functions previously performed by mainstream Black organizations such as the 84-member National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP), chaired by Patricia A. Ford. "The people who are doing the work are the community - only they are working for 527s," said Ford, the former executive vice president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU). snip~~~~~~~~~~~ www.blackcommentator.com/109/109_cover_campaign_pf.html =========================