black…MYstory

In Massachussets, the ghost of Willie Horton has been resurrected.

If you are too young to remember Willie Horton, he was a black convict who, while on furlough in the 80’s, committed a rape and a robbery. This case was used as a political bludgeon against Democratic Presidential Candidate, who had been the governor of Massachusets at the time Horton committed these crimes and helped sail George H.W. Bush into the Presidency. This ad campaign was the very definition of fearmongering and race-baiting by strike fear in the hearts of white voters that a black savage was going to attack their women so, they needed to vote for someone tough on crime.

Well, it appears that a Willie Horton-type campaign is being used again in, of all places, Massachusets:

This time, the part of Horton is being played by Benjamin LaGuer, an African-American rapist who argued he had received an unfair trial for a 1983 rape in Worcester. Between his persistent letters and his high-profile lawyers, LaGuer managed to attract some prominent supporters, including Boston University President John Silber, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel -and Deval Patrick, the Democratic candidate for governor.

Patrick wrote a couple of letters to the parole board on LaGuer’s behalf and contributed to a fund to underwrite a DNA test to prove his innocence, but dropped his support when the DNA test found him guilty. Patrick has made some mistakes in responding to criticism about the case, misstating the number of letters he wrote and initially denying he had made a contribution to LaGuer’s cause, but he did nothing wrong in showing an interest in the case.

Nor did he do anything wrong in another case, which is the subject of a brutal ad by his opponent, Republican Kerry Healey. In 1985, when he was a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Patrick helped successfully appeal a death sentence imposed on Carl Ray Songer, who had killed a police officer in Florida. That’s what NAACP lawyers do.

But, here’s the real gotcha about this ad:

Healey’s ad acknowledges as much, in a backhanded fashion: “Lawyers have the right to defend cop killers, but do we really want one as our governor?” it asks. Note the syntax, which leaves the impression a cop killer is running for governor. That’s no accident.

And, finally, for a bit of irony:

Meanwhile a real cop killer has been roaming the halls of the State House, the Boston Herald reported yesterday. The head of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Union, no stranger to political games, charged the Romney-Healey administration with allowing the man who killed a Boston detective during a 1973 robbery to be part of a Beacon Hill cleanup crew while serving the tail end of his sentence in a pre-release center.

And as Patrick has noted, if writing to a parole board disqualifies him for public office, it would also exclude Healey’s running-mate, former state trooper Reed Hillman, who wrote to the parole board on behalf of a friend convicted of assaulting a police officer.

So, it looks like the tried and true Republican tricks of painting opponents as soft on law enforcement and, more disturbingly, playing on the racial fears of white voters, are in full effect.

Well, in four weeks, we’ll see how well they worked.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Hmm…it looks like when UPN and WB merged to become the CW, they found a good portion of their audience went MIA.

The CW, the new network formed by a merger of UPN and the WB, is pulling in only half of its target audience. Specifically, over 1 million viewers, in the 18-34 demographic, have simply disappeared. A good portion of those viewer were black.

The mystery is finding out where these viewers went because they don’t appear to have switched to other networks. It’s as if they simply tuned out.

But, there may be some clue as to how they lost their black viewership:

It would appear a good part of those departed viewers are African American. UPN had two nights geared to black viewers, where the CW has but one, meaning fewer shows appealing to black audiences.

In a Media Life poll conducted shortly after UPN and the WB merged, more than 70 percent of respondents thought black viewers would be the demographic most likely to be disenfranchised by the new network, in terms of fewer shows aimed at them.

While this doesn’t totally explain the decline, I’m sure the CW sure would like to have those black viewers back. So, here’s a hint: bring back the black programming.

Popularity: 3% [?]

A quote attributed to John B. Bogarts says, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”

This is how I felt about a story coming out of Macon, Mississippi:

The Justice Department has chosen this no-stoplight, courthouse town buried in the eastern Mississippi prairie for an unusual civil rights test: the first federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act accusing blacks of suppressing the rights of whites.

The action represents a sharp shift, and it has raised eyebrows outside the state. The government is charging blacks with voting fraud in a state whose violent rejection of blacks’ right to vote, over generations, helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yet within Mississippi the case has provoked knowing nods rather than cries of outrage, even among liberal Democrats.

The Justice Department’s main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson, 100 miles to the southwest. Mr. Brown, tall, thin, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss, is accused by the federal government of orchestrating — with the help of others — “relentless voting-related racial discrimination” against whites, whom blacks outnumber by more than 3 to 1 in the county.

So, to find evidence of black powerbrokers suppressing white voters, you have to go to a sleepy corner of the country? Furthermore, you need this to be your test case?

I live in Ohio. If you want a black person to test your voter suppression law on, I’ll gladly offer up Ken Blackwell. For at least the last 3 years, he’s been suppressing the vote of poor folks, regardless of color.

Sorry, this just looks like another “man bites dog” story to me.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Black clergy in Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Baton Rouge, La., and Jackson, Miss. are putting efforts in place to make sure that people displaced by Hurrican Katrina will be able to vote by absentee ballot in the Nov. 7th elections.

For example, in Atlanta, the following efforts will be undertaken:

Several churches will function as centers for voters, distributing and collecting absentee ballots to mail in. The churches also plan to partner with advocacy groups and others in the city to distribute information and ballots.

The goal is to reach an estimated 5,400 Katrina evacuees in the area identified as registered voters.

It’s refreshing to hear some positive political stories to go along with all the negative we’re hearing. It’s even more encouraging that it’s about black folks helping other black folks preserve a sacred right.

Popularity: 3% [?]

It looks like Joe Lieberman, in attempts to make sure that he stays senator in Connecticut, has played a little bit of race-baiting and is using Al Sharpton as the bait. However, it appears that Joe is being hypocritical and Al has personally called him out.

The letter is reprinted below in its entirety.

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Dear Senator Lieberman:

Though I have resisted getting involved in the political hysteria around your re-election campaign, an October 5th New York Times article prompted me to break my silence. The article reports that you, accompanied by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, raised questions before and audience of supporters of Israel about my presence in the support of Ned Lamont, who defeated you with my assistance in the primary for the Democratic nomination for United States Senate in Connecticut. Though much has been said by surrogates of yours since Mr. Lamont’s victory, I have not seen anything directly attributed to you until this article. Frankly, I thought that you having called me personally before my endorsement of Lamont, and asking for my support, or at least to not support your opponent, in the name as you stated to me by phone, that “we were old friends,” meant that you were above petty politics. For you to then turn around and try to demonize someone you yourself had befriended and were comfortable enough to talk to at anytime either of us reached out to one another was unimaginable to me. You see, I even said in endorsing Ned Lamont that I disagreed with you on policy, but considered you a decent man.

However, even my disappointment with your character does not prompt this open letter. It is your open and flagrant race baiting and your risking Black-Jewish relations that many of us have tried to repair, for your own political gain, that is most troubling to me. I remember in the early stages of the 2004 Presidential Primary Campaign you and I talked and agreed that we would be careful not to exacerbate or revive Black-Jewish tensions. It led to our being very friendly and leading to much communication. Even after the campaign you agreed to sitting down and doing an interview for the National Action Network documentary of my campaign on how impressed you were, and how well we worked together (a tape we still have). I recall how many took note in the 2000 election when you were the Vice Presidential candidate you publicly stated you wanted to meet with Minister Louis Farrakhan who many had denounced as anti-Semitic. For you now to totally flip the script to hopefully incite some race based hysteria in a desperate attempt to save your political career is beneath the dignity of the man I thought I got to know in 2004. You never once attacked or questioned my commitment to Israel or any racial group in private or public. In fact, you commended my 2001 trip to Israel as a guest of the Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, where I denounced terrorism. To now rewrite history and play on peoples’ fear for petty political gain in abhorrent.
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Popularity: 3% [?]

We have heard, time and time again, the President and his follower say that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms. Furthermore, we have heard them use confusing language that makes it hard to distinguish between outside terrorists and Iraqi insurgents. So, are we to believe that the reason that Iraqi insurgents hate us for our freedoms?

If that is the reasoning, I would have to say that this is a false conclusion. In fact, I would propose an alternate reason for why they hate us: because of our 2003 invasion of their country, hundreds of thousands have died unnecessarily.

According to a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, an estimated 650,000 people have died as a result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

This number is derived from an estimated 601,000 deaths from violence and the rest from disease and other causes. This would mean that about 500 people a day are dying there. This estimate is about 20 times higher than the December 2005 estimate that the President gave and about 13 times the estimate offered by the Iraq Body Count research group.

Needless to say, this will be a controversial study, especially given the Republican Party’s low marks on the Iraq War lately.

The official Department of Defense line is:

“it would be difficult for the U.S. to precisely determine the number of civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of insurgent activity. The Iraqi Ministry of Health would be in a better position, with all of its records, to provide more accurate information on deaths in Iraq.”

However, according to Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the story is “tried and true,” and added that “this is the best estimate of mortality we have.”

Well, once again, it appears that we are not getting the full story on this war.

Popularity: 3% [?]

To put it plain, Ohio Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell, like most career politicians, is a whore. Whores will get into bed with anyone if the money’s right. But, if what I am reading is true, he’s taken it to a new level. According to the Columbus Free Press, Kenneth Blackwell has allied himself with white supremacists.

Blackwell toured the state with Larry Pratt, author of ARMED PEOPLE VICTORIOUS, which advocates the creation of militant right-wing militias. Pratt has spoken and shared platforms in the past with Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi Aryan Nation members. He was forced to take a leave of absence from Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign over charges of white supremacist and anti-semitic views. Pratt’s 150,000-member Gun Owners of America is proudly to the right of the National Rifle Association.

According to the Columbus Dispatch, Pratt says he couldn’t be a racist because he is campaigning with Blackwell, an African-American. Blackwell is “our kind of guy,” says Pratt, in reference to Blackwell’s support of gun owners’ rights.

Blackwell campaign spokesperson attorney Eric Seabrook, conceded on Sunday, October 8 to the Khari Enaharo show listeners on 98.9FM radio that Pratt was a white supremacist but, he stressed “it was all about the gun rights issue.”

But this is not the first time Blackwell has lined up with extreme right-wing backers boasting racist and anti-semitic roots. Earlier this year Blackwell posted on his website a picture of himself addressing the Council for National Policy. The CNP has deep “neo-fascist” and Ku Klux Klan ties according to Chip Berlet of the Boston-based Political Research Associates. In addition to right wing extremists such as Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Robertson, the CNP embraces a broad spectrum of powerful, reactionary bigots.

Among them are members of the Ahmanson family, major funders of extremist publications and electronic voting machines. The Ahmanson’s financial and political ties are thoroughly intertwined with both ES&S and Diebold, mainstays of the electronic hardware used to steal the Ohio vote. Among their associates are Bob and Todd Urosevich, whose executive and programming work has helped shape the two voting machine companies.

How a black man can align himself with radical white supremacists is beyond me. But, they say “politics makes strange bedfellows”. Now, I understand why. So, let’s repeat my previous statment together: “whores will get into bed with anyone if the money’s right.”

Popularity: 14% [?]

In scouring YouTube, I was able to find an excellent video posted by the Coalition for Justice.

I found it moving and I hope that it inspires others to keep this issue alive.

Also, if you want to continue to voice your anger, here is the contact information for Gov. Jeb Bush and state attorney general Charlie Crist:

For Jeb Bush:

E-mail:
Governor Jeb Bush
jeb.bush@myflorida.com

Write:
PL 05 The Capitol
400 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

Telephone:
850/488-4441
Fax: 850/487-0801

For Charlie Crist:

Main office mailing address
Office of Attorney General Charlie Crist
State of Florida
The Capitol PL-01
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1050
Main office telephone numbers
Switchboard: 850-414-3300
SunCom: 994-3300

Citizens Services: 850-414-3990
Florida Relay/TDD: 800-955-8771
Florida Toll Free: 1-866-966-7226
Fax: 850-410-1630
SunCom Fax: 210-1630

Popularity: 4% [?]

It’s been 278 days, Governor Jeb Bush.

It’s been 278 days, state attorney general Charles Crist.

It’s been 278 days since Martin Lee Anderson, a boy sent to a boot camp for joyriding in his grandmother’s car, was killed after being in the custody of camp guards for less than two hours.

Martin was a boy who made good grades but made one bad decision: he and his friend took a joyride in Martin’s grandmother’s car. Martin was the passenger. At the urging of authorities, his grandmother pressed charges against him to scare him straight. He was sentenced to a boot camp for juvenile offenders. Martin collapsed while exercising. For his “noncompliance”, Martin was kicked and kneed by up to 9 guards for a half-hour while a nearby nurse watched on. When they found out what they had done, the guards tried to revive the unconcious teen by stuffing ammonia tablets in his nostrils and covering his mouth and nose. This suffocated him. He was taken to a hospital and died several hours later.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

I originally wrote this on January 24, 2006 on a previous incarnation of these blogs. Given that it’s the political season, I thought it appropriate the share this again.

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You know what I am tired of — black Republicans who attempt to beat me over the head with their rhetoric and chastise us for not being Republican. The rationale I always hear employed is that the “Democrats take advantage of Black people”. Well, I readily admit that this is true. However, what do you, as black Republicans have going on for yourselves? All over the internet, I see articles and press releases from groups like Project 21, defending Republican racism while excoriating Democrats as racists. However, I have to ask, who’s benefitting?

I see a few black folks in key positions but, in general, the Grand Old Party isn’t showing you love. You’re trotted out when needed to address “black issues” but, if you were a true partner, wouldn’t they ask you for your views on foreign policy or the economy? Wouldn’t you be brought on to debate issues besides whether or not “Cosby was right” or if “Bill Bennett’s comments were acceptable” or “why Bush is a good leader for Black America”? I mean, really, for people who accuse the Left of playing the “race card”, Republicans have no problem putting their negroes on parade.

I see black Republicans telling us to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” but, when’s the last time you funded your own organizations, much less political campaigns? For people who have no problem treating the rest of us as if we are footservants to white interests, I don’t see you stepping up and running the show. Oh, I see a few people here and there getting the spotlight (Condoleeza Rice, Michael Steele, etc.) but, in general, what is the party’s leadership doing to ensure that their loyal black backers get a real piece of the pie?

So, black Republicans, it’s time to put up or shut up. Don’t give me the line about what the Dems are not doing. If you offer a real alternative then, as we used to say, “show and prove”. Until then, you can also count yourselves among those being taken advantage of.

Popularity: 12% [?]