Murder of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey

Chauncey Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post and a former reporter for the Oakland Tribune, was assassinated on a downtown street in broad daylight in Oakland, California, Thursday, August 2, 2007. Bailey was a long-time distinguished journalist, who had also written for the Detroit News, UPI, and the Hartford Courant.

Devaughdre Broussard, 19, has been arrested for the murder. Police says he has confessed to the shotgun murder, saying he killed Bailey because of stories he was writing about an institution known as Your Black Muslim Bakery where Broussard was a handyman. The suspect's ties to a black nationalist institution has prompted agonizing soul-searching about Oakland's radical black tradition, but Don't hold your breath waiting for ideologues to change. The reaction so far has been either total indifference or a predictable "spin" based on the ideological predispositions of the commentator.

Silly me. I posted a "Diary" on this subject on The Daily Kos:

Murder of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey

It is tempting to post something over there because you know thousands, maybe millions of eyeballs will see it. Can you beleive I got trashed for being a "troll" over there? I write a diary about a tragedy of grave concern to the African-American community (who by the way, the most loyal block of Democratic voters), and I get trashed on The Daily Kos for being a "troll!"

Unbelievable!

Those guys really are crazy.

They say I am a "hit and run" diarist. Excuse me. The one consistent thread running though all my Daily Kos diaries and blog posts is an emphatic rejection of the "Identity Politics" as it has been practiced by both Democrats and Republicans in recent decades. From my vantage point in California -- the biggest most diverse state in the nation and a state where 51% of the population is still routinely referred to as "minority" -- the old politics of "Identity Politics" is not working.