Monthly Archives: November 2016

Nancy Pelosi Stays On

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This win by Nancy Pelosi is immediately being spun in social media as every ugly stereotype of 2016’s elected Democrats: “Coastal”, “elitist”, “aging”, “out of touch with Middle America”, “Dems will keep losing”, “thanks for another 4 years of Trump”, “identity politics”, etc. Journalists and pundits are hedging toward this narrative, from Chris Cilizza to Krystal Ball to Matt Drudge.

Tim Ryan came in as a challenger, but I don’t think he promoted himself enough to the rank-and-file caucus members. His optics turned off quite a few politicos seeing him as a “working class white man is best to fix it” arrogant type. His interview with Lawrence O’Donnell may have strengthened that perception.

But this is also a flashpoint. A lot of people wanted a working class-descended white man from the “flyover” Rust Belt to lead the party in the House in order to shunt “identity politics” and give succor to Middle America’s Trump voters in the short term. They *really* wanted this, if at least for the political gratification of a progressive leadership in one’s likeness.

But, for better or worse, they aren’t elected Democrats.

FUN FACTOID: The 115th Congress will also be the second time that Nancy Pelosi has served as House Minority Leader under a Republican presidency. She served as Minority Leader from 2003 to 2007 under George Bush’s presidency, then became Speaker after leading the Dems to a majority.

For over 13 years and counting, Pelosi still remains the highest-ranking elected female politician in U.S. history. She was the first and only female Speaker, first and only female House Leader of a major party, and the first and only female whip of a major party in the House (2002-2003).

The 115th Congress will also remain slim and lopsided in women’s representation: the number of women in the House will drop by 1 member to 83/435 (20% of the body, compared to 50% of the U.S. population), while the Senate’s share of women will go up by 1 to a record 21/100.

Changing How Superdelegates Work

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For those who are interested: Under the 2016 DNC Rules Committee’s reform package, a 21-member unity commission, chaired by Clinton supporter Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and vice-chaired by Sanders supporter Larry Cohen, is to be appointed “no later than 60 days” after the 2016 general election. The commission would report by January 1, 2018, and its recommendations will be voted on at the next Democratic National Committee meeting, well before the beginning of the 2020 Democratic primaries.

The commission is to consider a mix of Clinton and Sanders ideas, including:

  1. expanding ‘eligible voters’ ability to participate in the caucuses in caucus states, a Clinton campaign concern
  2. encouraging ‘the involvement in all elections of unaffiliated or new voters who seek to join the Democratic Party through same-day registration and re-registration'”, which is one of Sanders’ demands
  3. In future Democratic Conventions, about two-thirds of superdelegates would be bound to the results of state primaries and caucuses. The remaining one-third – Members of Congress, Governors, and distinguished party leaders – would remain unpledged and free to support the candidate of their choice.

How Afro-Cubans Fought the Cuban “Jim Crow”

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“During the war years Spain sought, with considerable success, to divide Cubans along racial lines by portraying itself as the defender of white “civilization” and the rebels as black barbarians pursuing the goal of an Africanized, Haitianized Cuba. Once the rebels had been defeated, Spanish policy changed direction, making an open bid for Afro-Cuban support by gradually repealing the caste laws. Spanish officials did not act spontaneously but, rather, under pressure from a well-organized civil rights movement based in the social clubs, mutual aid societies, and civic organizations of the Afro-Cuban middle class. Under the leadership of journalist and political activist Juan Gaulberto Gomez, in 1887 these organizations formed an islandwide Directorio Central de las Sociedades de la Raza de Color to coordinate the civil rights struggle. Between 1878 and 1893 Afro-Cuban activists obtained government edicts outlawing restrictions on interracial marriage; segregation in public education and public services; and the keeping of official birth, death, and marriage records in volumes separated by race.”
—
Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000
By George Reid Andrews

#Cuba #AfroCubans

The Incredibly-Undead Democratic Party

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The declarations of the death of the Democratic Party seem pretty premature.

I know that many people demand the death of this party. Those who lost the election, those who backed the party’s candidate, and those who ran the party’s fundraising apparatus during this process have been roundly blamed and shamed for their loss.

But there is no viable alternative for the bulk of the Democratic Party’s membership at the present time. The Greens consider at least half of the Democratic Party to be too “neoliberal” for their liking. The same demographic is considered much too “socialist” for the Libertarians’ liking. The same goes even more so for the Constitution Party. So existing second-tier political parties are not viable.

The Green Party at the national level has marked much of their political culture with both an adherence to environmentalism and historically-marginalized identity politics (in the true sense of the word) as well as a strong, visceral hatred for the “corporatist” Democratic Party and its candidates. The Green Party also did not welcome those in their own party who supported Bernie Sanders over Jill Stein, even going so far as to publicly undermine Sanders supporters and promote Stein at Sanders’ expense. This hatred for Democrats makes resources and recruitment scarce for the Green Party, but it gives a veneer of “integrity” to their party.

But what would the Berniecrat Party – the party of the bluebird – adopt as their party culture? What would be the topic which would color the existence of Berniecrat activists?

The Greens have environmentalism and socialism. The Libertarians have “liberty” and the free market. The Constitutionists have dominionism. What hobby horse do the Berniecrats have?

It seems as if Berniecrats, isolating as they are to the Clinton supporters who voted for her in the primary, would struggle to form their own national party culture separate from existing center-left parties like the Democrats, Greens and the even-smaller Socialist Alternative.

Even the Democratic Socialists of America – a very pro-Bernie outfit – doesn’t run candidates as a party, but operates as a non-profit organization. The DSA likely don’t have the structure or the motivation to organize as a political party, and I notice that the organization’s chapters are largely based in bigger cities and college campuses.

Speaking of bigger cities, I think being in an urban or rural area also counts greatly on the viability of a left-wing third party. I can imagine that the Greens’ deep-green environmentalist image would help in some rural areas if promoted more effectively, even if deep-green environmentalism is divisive in regions where the extraction of natural resources for profit is of great economic importance.

But you’ll hardly find an open socialist in the sticks. You won’t find a fan of Marx and Castro in the sticks. And enough of the population lives outside of metropolitan areas to live in the rural spaces privileged by mechanisms like the Electoral College.

So Berniecrats who want the death of the Democratic Party need to offer a sustainable alternative which transcends divides like urban/rural, race/class, minority/majority, etc. and give a strong, enduring reason for why it is viable to vote for Bernicrats.

Shaming of the Poor

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I am poor.
I am working class.
I receive government benefits.
I dropped out of my first attempt at college in Atlanta, and returned home shamefaced.
I used a Pell grant to go to community college and then a 4-year college.
I took a Stafford loan to pay off my final year of college.
I live with my mother.
I only look for jobs at which I am adept, in which I have a strong interest and for which I do my best.
I’m paying my college debts.
I live on military housing as a civilian visitor.
I have a lot of privilege that many other people do not.
I help Mom pay bills, and vice versa.

Do I feel bad? Yes. Often.
Do I feel like this will make me a political target? Yes. I fear that.

It was not long ago, just when I was coming out of college, that I was asked by some of my own family members why I was still living with Mom in my late 20s without a job. I felt targeted over this due to other family passions in which I was not involved.

Am I financially illiterate? I frequently feel like that, even as I try to save money. I still feel guilt over past spending from 3, 5 or 6 years ago. I still feel like an idiot over past spending habits, feeling regret over things I’ve bought.

I wrestle with the “temporarily embarrassed billionaire” feelings a lot. Knowing that I don’t make a living income is sometimes a frightful knowledge.

But I feel like I need to own this, and to not let this status get control of my emotions.

So I will never tell you to pull yourself up by your own economic bootstraps. Not only is that a dick move, but I refuse to propagate the “wealth as a blessing/mark of character” fraud which turns so many people against each other in Middle America.

I own up to being poor. I own up to depending on others. And I’m committed to paying it back by working to make life easier for others.

Progressives Arming Themselves More Like Conservatives

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Communists are not liberals.
Socialists are not liberals.
Anarchists are not liberals.
Antifa are not liberals.

All four groups heavily espouse arming themselves with self-defense and weapons, even firearms if need be. They are also feared by fascists, conservatives and libertarians alike, and may be circumstantial allies to liberals when it comes to resistance against classist, authoritarian violence (even though liberals are not trusted by socialists).

Liberals have a conflicted history with armed self-defense, and are more respecting of nonviolent protest and the democratic process. They’re also laughed at by fascists, conservatives and libertarians alike for this (as many of us are being laughed at by Trumpists right now), but are useful for conservatives when it comes to preserving the political status quo.

At this moment, I don’t know if I want to identify as a progressive liberal or a socialist. I would rather that we had UK-style gun control in which both police and the public are not armed, and that might make me a bad socialist, but I also see that socialists and the far-left speak in the respective language of violence and self-defense which conservatives and the far-right also speak, which might make me a bad liberal.

Meanwhile, since Election Day, racial and gender minorities have been buying up guns and ammo, and taking gun classes, and getting gun licenses, to protect themselves over the next four years.

It’s depressing, but understandable, to see this happen. We’re now huddling into bunkers to prepare for an armed winter in America.

Just some thoughts coming to mind while perusing the Socialist Rifle Association‘s page.

White Racist Persecution Complex

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White Supremacists/Nationalists/Alt-Right folks LOVE to compare themselves and their plight to that of African-Americans in their demand for “ethno-states”. They devalue actual, living, breathing Euro-descended people in the process.

The thing is, if the slave trade hadn’t happened, if our African ancestors’ families were not forcibly broken up, would we even be describing ourselves as “Black” or even “African-American” in the first place?

We would have been Yoruba, or Asante, or Dahomean, or Kongo, or whatever other ethnicities we would have brought with us to the Americas. We would not have been put through such a genealogical ringer in which only the words “nigger”, “Negro” or “colored” matter in their description of one of a similar skin color.

Instead, our post-slavery ancestry is all we really have. Even the angriest Black Nationalist is doing a lot of (slipshod but well-meaning) compensation for what was taken from us in over 246 years of slavery on the North American continent.

What similar trauma troubles those who yearn for “White Pride Worldwide” or “A White Homeland for Ourselves and Our Children”?

What great historical, enduring cataclysm happened to Europeans or to people of European descent that would see a minority clamor for a militarized “safe space” in the 21st century?

Was it 9/11? Was it the refugee crisis ensuing, eventually, from Euro-American adventures in Iraq + the chaotic proxy war in Syria?

Or was it the Ashkenazi minority and their sufferings of Christian European hypocrisy over millennia? Even now, the genocidal resentment against Ashkenazi Jews among White Supremacists is just as rabid as it is senseless and unfounded in logic. “Show us where the big bad Jew hurt you.”

Nothing has been lost from White rule. It’s still a White Man’s world. It’s still a White Man’s country.

These White Supremacists – the National Policy Institute, for one – are acting like they’ve been losing so much ground for so long, and that Trump will gain back what they’ve imagined as losing.

But their imagined traumas simply don’t compare. And the pain they wish to inflict upon not only people of color but also other White people for flouting their ideals is unjustified and unjust.

Local Politics of Scale

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We want to talk about how there are not enough young people participating in politics.

But the problem is that the pathway to participation is incredibly narrow for a growing population, even at the local level. Our political system is not keeping up with the growth or complexity of our public, even at the local level.

Think of Columbus-Muscogee. 10 people sitting on a city council representing a population of 200,000+ people. That is 1 person per 20,000 people.

8 of the members represent districts, and 2 are elected at-large. That’s too few for too many. That’s a disparity of representation.

Where are the elected neighborhood councils for the districts? Where are the opportunities for the less-monied but just-as-able-minded residents of our city to advise and decide policy at a smaller level than the entire city itself?