United with whom

There is a tendency among Greens to view labor in a classic, Marxist way. That they are struggling in opposition to their capitalist masters and that all good progressives have to support their work. I only buy part of that line. Unfortunately, I have had enough bad experiences with bad unions to question such overall approval.

The best example I know came in NY where a customer, as local trucking company, was about to go out of business. The owner, one of those executives who would put on coveralls and get in the middle of a dirty diesel engine to make sure that things were done right, called in the shop steward and informed him of the shut down. When asked why it was happening, he said that theft from shipments was so high that he could no longer get any insurance that he could afford. At which point the shop steward asked "How much pilferage could you stand?" There are crooks everywhere.

But you don't have to be a crook to do a lot of damage. Now, I am wondering what will happen with the union connection to the Democratic Party. As anyone who follows this blog knows, I have been adamantly opposed to King Coal, to mountain top removal mining, to coal fired power plants... and that is still the major use of coal.

Now, Richard Trumka, one time president of the United Mine Workers of America, born of a coal mining family, heads the AFL-CIO. For all the good that Trumka has done for the movement, and that is a lot, if he chooses to use the power of the unions to convince Democrats to continue coal's dark path, then he will be using that power to destroy the future, not to build a better one.

As an ecology advocate, I am holding my breath, but I don't have a lot of hope.

Malcolm X for Private Schools?

"We want freedom by any means necessary."


Was El Haji Malik El Shabazz (a.k.a. Malcolm X, the most famous Black Nationalist in the United States in the last half century) a Republican-Conservative advocate for private schools?

Sound ridiculous? Read on.

Nothing gets me in “hot water” with some of my fellow African-American activist brothers and sisters like my public, unapologetic rejection of 40-year-old “Black Power” clichés from the 1960s. I lived through the 1960s. As a nave Howard University freshman I witnessed the rebellion in Washington, D.C. when Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968. Forty-one years later in, of all places, that very same Washington, D.C., the liberating "Black Power" slogans of my youth have become tools for conservatives.

Browsing The Washington Post web site, I noticed an Op-Ed by a former Democratic mayor and a former city councilman illustrating abuse of Malcolm's oft-quoted line about "any means necessary" better than anything I could have dreamed up. See below Malcolm X, of all people, being trotted out on behalf of the District's controversial school voucher program.



Published by The Washington Post, Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Education, By Any Means
By Anthony A. Williams and Kevin P. Chavous

"We want freedom by any means necessary."

When Malcolm X uttered those words in June 1964, a chill traveled down the spine of America. The phrase signaled a change in the tone and tenor of the civil rights movement. It was understood that those fighting for equality and justice were willing to do anything to achieve those rights. Malcolm's words made clear that tedious, incremental steps toward freedom for African Americans were unacceptable and would not be tolerated. "By any means necessary" represented a crossroads in the civil rights movement.

Our nation faces a similar crossroads today regarding education reform. Ensuring that every American child receives equal access to high-quality education represents our last civil rights struggle. By any objective measure, the educational offerings we provide for our children, particularly children of color, do them a disservice.
. . .

The reality of our children's deficits demands much more than we have given them. Platitudes, well-crafted speeches and the latest three-to-five-year reform plan aren't good enough. We must find ways to educate every child now, by any means necessary.

It was that spirit that led us, as elected officials of the District in 2003, to promote the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The program, which provides scholarships for low-income children to attend private schools, is part of the three-sector initiative that annually provides $50 million in federal funding to the District for education purposes.

. . .

I could not help but laugh out loud when I read this sophistry. Some of my most passionately nationalist friends in the Green Party Black Caucus are active members of the DC Statehood Green Party. Section IX.2 of the DC party platform categorically states:

Public schools should not be: · Privatized · Made to compete with private schools through government-funded vouchers · Used for military recruitment (e.g., through JROTC) · Used as places to advertise corporate products or sell junk food to students

What do my DC nationalist comrades think about this?

Was El Haji Malik El Shabazz a Goldwater Republican in 1964? I don't think so.

* * *

In recent decades, the Republican-Conservative clique succeeded in demonizing public schools, public school teachers, and teacher unions. Unions faithfully lend knee-jerk support for all Democrats and devote a lot of money and energy to electing more Democrats even though these cowardly Clinton-era DINOs do nothing to counter the anti-teachers crusade. Indeed, the “bipartisan” consensus seems to be that inner-city public schools are where the hard-earned tax dollars of "People Like Us" are “wasted” on the pathological children of "Those People."

As I write this, California is facing a complicated May 19th referendum to "borrow from Peter to pay Paul" as part of our permanent "crisis" over the state budget. Once again, a lot of well-meaning progressive Greens are carrying water for the Democratic Party Establishment. Thus, for example, one of our strong Los Angeles Greens recently posted without comment a statement on a Green E-List by the California Teachers Association:

"Vote YES on May 19. Vote for jobs, for teachers, for schools, for social services"
. . . Blah! Blah! Blah!

I, myself, am firmly convinced that independent progressives, including Greens routinely condemned by "liberals" as "crazy" and beyond the pale, should NOT do the "dirty work" that arrogant, smug, urban Democrats are unwilling to do for themselves. If all these teachers unions always support these bad Democrats, that's Prima facia evidence that something is wrong with union leadership, too.

Similarly, I am even more convinced that independent progressive Blacks and Latinos (that is, persons of African and Latin American descent who really favor Green change and not the ones using "nationalist" slogans to hide their deep-seated social and economic conservatism) should NOT advance the conservative agenda of the likes of Anthony Williams.

El Haji Malik El Shabazz: may eternal peace be unto him. This is not 1964. It's 2009 and time to make our own Green slogans.

CA-37 - 37% of 11% = Safe Seat in Congress

You call this a democracy?

[UPDATE: MORE ON CASINO ISSUES]

Everybody says Laura Richardson is on her way to Congress. In the special election to succeed the late Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald. Richardson received a “whooping” 37.57% of the ballots cast. That is 11,956 out of 31,825 votes out of 265,102 registered voters.

In other words, Laura Richardson is presumed to be going to the Congress based on 4.51% of the registered voters.

On this Fourth of July no doubt the good folks in Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, and Iran are really, really impressed by the manifest superiority of democracy in America.

Follow the Votes

(Source: County of Los Angeles Department of Register-Recorder/County Clerk)

                                                        
                                                     
NAME:                  PARTY:      VOTE:     PERCENT:       
                                                     
LAURA RICHARDSON       DEM         11,956    37.57
JENNY OROPEZA          DEM          9,960    31.30
VALERIE MC DONALD      DEM          3,027     9.51
JOHN M KANALEY         REP          2,425     7.62
PETER MATHEWS          DEM          1,125     3.53
TERI RAMIREZ           REP            612     1.92
DANIEL A BREZENOFF     GREEN          391     1.23
JEFFREY LEAVITT        REP            386     1.21
ED WILSON              DEM            362     1.14
L J "LJ" GUILLORY      REP            361     1.13
HERB PETERS            LIB            342     1.07
GEORGE A PARMER JR     DEM            242     0.76
LEE DAVIS              DEM            202     0.63
JEFFREY S PRICE        DEM            142     0.45
BILL F GRISOLIA        DEM            141     0.44
FELICIA FORD           DEM            122     0.38
MERVIN EVANS           DEM             29     0.09
                                                     
REGISTERED VOTERS:                265,102   100.00
RICHARDSON VOTE:                   11,956     4.51

What Does it Mean?

A clueless AP reporter actually gushed that "an energized black electorate proved the difference." Ha! If that is "energized" then next year the Republican won't have to campaign.

Follow the Money

Laura Richardson raised $105,000 for her campaign.

In addition, according to the Long Beach Press Telegram, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor poured $275,000 into the Richardson campaign. They put 1,140 union members on the street and on the phone contacting 37,000 union voters, making 45,000 phone calls.

                                                                                                                                     
MONEY RAISED:          $105,000
MONEY FROM LABOR:      $275,000
TOTAL MONEY:           $380,000

RICHARDSON VOTE:         11,956

DOLLARS PER VOTE:           $31.78

Follow the Tribes

That’s not all. A huge proportion of the Richardson vote was a direct, unapologetic appeal for “racial” solidarity from the African-American community. Black residents make up 22.7 percent of the district's population, down from 33.6 percent a decade ago, while Latinos make up 47.6 percent. Among registered voters, however, African-Americans still have the edge.

Throughout the campaign Richardson repeatedly said creepy stuff like "no one can take our seat from us... " and persisted in this "party line" about "our community" and "our seat" even after being criticized. Los Angeles’ major African-American weeklies, The Los Angeles Sentinel and the Los Angeles WAVE quit pretending to be newspapers and became the Pravda and Izvestia for the Richardson campaign. At her victory party, gleefully reported by Pravda, there were high-fives all around over sending a "bad sister" to Washington.

Incidently, California casino gambling interests (which the MSM always refers to as "Indian Tribes" instead of as the profit-seeking capitalist businessmen that they are), spent $450,000 for Latina Jenny Oropoeza on account of Oropeza's vote on a controversial question about expanding casino slots. And so, Marc Cooper of the LA Weekly and The Nation, warns about "what might become a full-blown political war between labor and the tribes."

The Incredible Flip-Flopping Fabian Nuñez

Why did the unions come out so strongly for Richardson even though Oropeza had a strong labor record? Presumably, it was their anger over this casino business.

Check this out!

Do a search on Google News and this is exactly the way two items appear:

Richardson wins primary for congressional seat

Los Angeles Times, CA - Jun 27, 2007
By John L. Mitchell, Times Staff Writer Assemblywoman Laura Richardson finished ahead of her closest Democratic rival, state Sen. Jenny Oropeza, and a field ...

Impasse over tribal gaming accords ends

Los Angeles Times, CA - Jun 28, 2007
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) agreed to move ahead with the compacts, which the state Senate already had approved. But union issues were not ...

It was like: "The election is over now and Laura is in... Screw the unions!"

Here's what flip-flopping Fabian told the Los Angeles Times about his endorsement of Richardson:

Nuñez, a former labor organizer, said he had heard some of the complaints about his decision.

"There were some voices out there who think that because you are Latino, you should only be supporting Latinos, but we were able to lower the decibels a bit," he said. "The good thing about the job I have is that it carries a little bit of weight with it."

More important, Nuñez said, was the principle of supporting a strong African American candidate.

"I wanted to send a message loud and clear to the African American community of Los Angeles that we have got to work together to advance the Democratic agenda," he said. "The cause of African Americans is not a flag that African Americans have to carry on their own."

What a world-class Clintonesque double-talking hustler!

August Run-Off

Since Richardson received way below 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff election between the top vote-getters for each party in August. So, Green Party candidate Daniel Abraham Brezenoff gamely carries on as the last progressive left standing and the only candidate actually talking about issues like the war, healthcare, and the environment.

Big league politics in America is a big bucks dirty business. Nevertheless, this nonsense bodes ill for the future of the Democratic Party at least in a hugely diverse state like California. As a matter of practical politics Democrats will never be able to raised enough cash to "buy" more votes than rich Republicans in competitive districts. And Republicans are s-o-o-o-o much better at playing the divide-and-conquer game. I can see 'em now -- cackling over a "war" between the Black, Brown, and Red "Tribes."

So, as a member of the Black "tribe" I'm supposed to be "proud" of this?

I feel a little ashamed and frightened for my country when at this critical moment in the history of the world anybody can schlep into the United States House of Representatives in this way.

Our Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish friends in Iraq must be really impressed. Pray each night Laura Richardson is not another Harold Ford. Work like hell each day for Daniel.