Category Archives: Politics

We became silent about things that matter. That’s why we lost.

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The good news: Muscogee County went blue for Carter, Nunn and Bishop. Incumbent state reps Hugley (unopposed), Buckner (against a Republican challenger), and Smyre (unopposed) all won Muscogee, and no Democratic incumbents lost in the General Assembly.

The bad news: Only Bishop is going to federal office. None of the Democratic slate won statewide office. Roslund lost against McKoon for the state Senate. Wasn’t even close.

The post-mortem meeting for the Democrats in Columbus-Muscogee is on Saturday morning. Words will be traded. Fireworks may go off.

But I appreciate this month that I spent volunteering on the campaign with so many forward thinking, proactive people.

  • Patricia Lassiter, who spent months out of this year working campaigns, making and answering calls, taking crap from some fools and desperate activists, knocking on doors across Columbus to get the vote out – first for Mayor Tomlinson in May and second for the statewide Democratic slate of candidates. I personally admire Patricia’s personality, work ethic, ability to organize and progressive politics.
  • Mary-Kate Clement, who graduated from Marquette and flew from Chicago to Georgia to join Patricia in helping the county’s coordinated campaign. I stayed late in the office with Patricia and Mary-Kate on several nights when they had to get things wrapped up and called in. I am so sorry that she had to see her own home state go to a Republican governor (and Wisconsin, where she previously interned for Mary Burke, going back to Walker for another term). Her mother, who came by our office several times, is cool. Hope they do well in the future.
  • David Smith, spirited and knowledgeable 17-year-old who made phone calls and knocked on doors for the campaign. He is a party activist in the making.
  • William Viruet, native New Yorker who GOTV’s on a very down-to-earth level and does a mean massage.
  • All of the people – of all ages, even slightly underage – who gave their time and energy to this campaign – Berlinda, Tom, both Bills from the UU Fellowship of Columbus, Charlotte, LaVon, Marlyne, Alice, Eddie (Mr. “Souls to the Polls”), James, and several others. You all did the great work for a Blue Muscogee.

But now I am furious, and the colleagues who I met over this month know how furious I am with what just happened.

The Democrats lost across this country. Low turnout happened in several states, and yet it was not for a lack of African-American voters. Older voters, as usual, turned out more for the vote than younger voters.

And yet, progressive legislations won on the ballot at the SAME DAMN TIME. Across the country!

  • Minimum wage increases passed by voters in Arkansas, Nebraska, Illinois (advisory), Alaska and South Dakota
  • Marijuana possession decriminalized by voters in Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., while Florida gained 57% in favor but not the 60% necessary for passage. 6 Michigan municipalities’ voters passed similar measures.
  • California voters passing the reduction of dozens of nonviolent property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, resulting in potential thousands leaving California’s prisons.
  • A severe anti-choice “personhood” amendment being defeated in Colorado and North Dakota.
  • A fracking ban being passed in Denton, Texas and Athens, Ohio.
  • Dallas voters retain SOGI-inclusive NDO for city workers
  • Washington voters backed a criminal background check on all guns.

And I’m not the only one who noticed this. The Nation noticed this contradiction of voters supporting progressive legislation and voting for regressive candidates in the same election, so did Ring of Fire Radio. And I wonder “WTF just happened?”

And I’ve learned so much from reading articles about how populism won at the local and state levels, even as the GOP expanded their reach in many state legislatures.

A few words to the Democrats and to progressives all over Georgia, especially the state leadership in Georgia.

  • Stop being cowards on our principles. Stop apologizing.
  • Support our president and Obamacare.
  • If party leaders are cowards, throw them out. They are bums.
  • Shut up about money. No seriously, DNC/DSCC/DCCC/DGA/DLCC, stop sending me emails asking for contributions to the party’s war chest every damn day. I’m sick of being begged by career party activists for money when they don’t pull their weight.
  • Embrace your constituencies like your life depended on it.
  • Campaign on economic justice like your life depended on it.
  • Meet more often, like the party is your second, more secular church.
  • Don’t be afraid to remove those who don’t adhere to progressive principles.
  • If you can’t throw out the bums, do everything to make their political lives difficult.
  • Primary those who won’t carry their weight or have gotten too soft in their seats.
  • Campaign on issues. Not party, not personality, not demographics. ISSUES. Hear the issues, speak the issues, vote on the issues, poll the issues, build alliances around the issues, raise money on issues, publicize the issues, saturate local media with issues, recruit and test your candidates on the issues.
  • Do NOT disrespect progressive activists who are doing the work if you’re not doing it yourself. Or else you will get ripped a new butthole, in public, by me.

I have more to say, but all in all, let’s up off of our asses and campaign as progressives, not the “NON-REPUBLICANS”.

As MLK said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter“. The voters cared about issues. We didn’t. We need to care about issues, to push them by whatever means necessary, and to embrace those who care about them, like our President. We need to care about the compassion of our government, and we must say it every time we get. Or else, there is nothing progressive about us.

#YesWeCan

Phone banking w/ Muscogee Democratic Coordinated Campaign today brought all the emotions up for me. Frustration, anger, excitement, hilarity.

Best hits: talking to an older woman who felt that “we have to pray for whoever gets in the chair so that they’ll help the poor”, talking to an African woman who angrily lambasted the Democratic Party’s response to voter suppression and the minimum wage as “lousy”, and talking to an older Tea Party supporter from Atlanta area who fears Obama bringing in the “illegals”/not standing up to Islam/not supporting the Pipeline out west/being a socialist unlike the past Democrats/dividing the races after Ferguson/not being a real Christian.

That last call took 45 minutes. I rebutted each and every single one of her points, but it ended amicably (I was running out of time). She was *really* fearful of a lot of things. I would’ve went longer.

The Big Tent Sucks

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Watching last month’s general election in Sweden, I was once again treated to the non-majoritarian nature of proportionally-representative election systems like Sweden (although the Feminist Initiative barely missed the 4%). It is not as zero-sum as ours: a total of 8 parties are now represented in the Swedish parliament (Riksdag), encompassing a range of variably-compact ideologies in a variety of portfolios.

I favor proportional representation due to its ability to better reflect the political diversity of the voting population, as well as its ability to let candidates be more honest and thorough about their ideologies.

In this year’s election, the Social Democrats gained the largest vote share and is tasked with forming a coalition that can back the next prime minister and cabinet; possible partners include the Left Party and the Green Party. On the opposite end, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats gained more seats from the free-market parties of the outgoing Alliance coalition, such as the Moderate Party, Liberal People’s Party, Christian Democrats and Centre Party.

In the United States, potential candidates and their supporters at the federal level would be grouped into just two parties – Democratic and Republican, Blue and Red, Liberal and Conservative, etc.

I contend that the sheer forcing of multiple ideologies together under two roofs is stifling. It forces all of the partisans who may not be predisposed to a whole-hog ideology to adopt such an ideology for the benefit of an unwieldy party unity. As a result, reasonable-minded people may find themselves trapped in an unpopular party because of the words, policies and actions of fellow partisans.

If you need to switch to another party, it shouldn’t have to make the news as some sort of epiphany or “I’ve seen the light” moment, whether it is the Charlie Crists, Lincoln Chafees, Gary Johnsons or Cynthia McKinneys of American politics. The candidate or voter shouldn’t have to feel like some sort of “traitor” for switching or creating new parties.

That’s why I support the Single Transferable Vote. I support having more options in Congress and state legislatures, including more equal representation for the six most-popular parties in the United States: Democratic, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Working Families, and Constitution.

I could see Rand Paul as an LP senator, Bernie Sanders as a WFP senator, at least a quarter of the House Republican caucus being Constitution Party members (including the likes of people like Louie Gohmert), a quarter of the same caucus being LP members (including some of the Tea Party-backed members like Justin Amash), most of the Congressional Progressive Caucus being members of the WFP or Greens, and so on, while center-right or center-left candidates would stick with more uniform, less-problematic Republican or Democratic parties.

Maybe after all the libertarians and socio-conservatives left for their own parties, the GOP would revert back to its image as the “Party of Lincoln”, or even to the pro-civil rights stance of the Radical Republicans of the Reconstruction era, or even to the likes of Eisenhower. I could imagine people like Rob Portman and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen remaining in this incarnation of the GOP.

Maybe after the progressives of the CPC left to join the Working Families Party and Greens, the Democrats would get much more pushback against their acquiescence to pro-MRI policies. Centrists like Dianne Feinstein, Kay Hagan and Harry Reid would still likely remain in this incarnation of the Democratic Party.

Maybe after the far-right Republican Study Group joins the Constitution Party, that party would be marginalized in their socially-far-right politics by the other parties in Congress through a sort of cordon sanitaire.

Any of these possibilities would perhaps prevent people from associating “fright-wing” politics with a plurality of the voting population, and allow voters to make a better distinction between the candidates for whom they would vote, as well as the issues on which they would campaign.

I just want more diversity of party labels to choose from, not this frustrating, debilitating duopoly in which we’ve been stuck for so long. And to have more diverse party choices in our politics, we need to dispense with the idea that anyone has to win a majority to be part of the political process.

We just need to win 4%.

The hatred for “political correctness” is as inane and useless as the concept itself.

No matter whether the complaints about “political correctness” come from RuPaul, Phyllis Schlafley, or other culture warriors who want to “preserve” what they were raised with, one thing I can be sure of is that anyone who cries persecution by “political correctness” is almost always the less-culturally-imaginative, more-arrogant party.

So #RuPaul, the more you cry “PC”, the less I think of you as a competent individual who can think of a detour away from pissing on some viewers, just because a word you use is part of “how you were raised”.

Just for the record, I think that one way to bolster support for our vets is by making Veterans ID cards which can make it easier for them to access vet-tailored services, both public and private. In light of how the DVA has faltered, it should fall on all levels of government to work smarter for support of military vets.

My stance on #StandYourGround, in reply to an insulting comment under 13WMAZ.com’s story:

I have lived most of my life without needing or using a gun. I have lived with the expectation that 1) the police are supposed to give the proper reaction to a criminal act and 2) disrupting the conditions which lead to violent cultures lessens the need for both police and handguns.

And for the record, I lived as a civilian in #WarnerRobins with my mother from 1992 to 2013. Even when we lived in a troubled low-income neighborhood for part of that time (Oldtown), we never had a gun in the house. I didn’t end up getting trapped in what so many other families found themselves, so I never needed a gun for self-defense.

What separates me from those who ended up going to jail for gun-related or drug-related crimes, the type that is supposed to be addressed by this expansion of gun laws?

They didn’t have a support network to draw upon during their turbulent years, they were easily drawn into violent cultures, they weren’t engaged in their youth, they were in poverty-driven homes.

This is a perfect breeding ground for petty violence in defense of self, of “honor”, of one’s gang, or of one’s trade in drugs. I saw the cycle with my own eyes while a teenager, and I’m sick of the cycle. Why aren’t we addressing the instability and poverty in our neighborhoods? SYG only reacts with fire when we should be healing our neighborhoods, our schools. SYG, in the longer run, makes no sense, and only adds more guns to the violence and instability.

So I see no part of my comment as being “stupid”. I’m 27, I lived without needing to defend myself with a gun in the house or pocket, and I managed to make it out OK in the heart of Georgia. Your anger at me is unjustified. I say “Yes” to “Fix Our Neighborhoods”. I say “Yes” to “#RaiseTheWage”. I say “Yes” to “Two-Year National Service”. I say “Yes” to “Affordable Healthcare”. I say “Yes” to “Decriminalization of Marijuana”. I say “Yes” to “#BanTheBox”. I say “Yes” to breaking the cycle of violence and poverty. I say “No” to “Stand Your Ground” and the further weaponization of our neighborhoods.

Uganda-Tanzania War – 33rd Anniversary

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Interesting anniversary today: Today is the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the Uganda-Tanzania War, in which Idi Amin declared war against Tanzania and sent troops over the Tanzanian border, Tanzania retaliated by mobilizing a paramilitary force and fired Russian Katyusha missiles into Uganda, and Gaddafi got involved in another military misadventure.

Libya under Muammar Gaddafi sent his own troops, including the so-called “Islamic Legion”, into Uganda to support Idi Amin, but they were soon on the front line against the Tanzanians and Ugandan anti-Amin exiles as Amin’s forces retreated.

After the Battle of Lukaya in which hundreds of lives were lost on both sides, the war was more or less an Amin-Gaddafi strategic retreat, and Amin fled Uganda on 10 April 1979; Gaddafi’s troops would flee into Kenya and Ethiopia shortly afterward.

Tanzanian troops stayed as peacekeepers until shortly after new elections were held, but Tanzania had to foot the bill without external support (the then-OAU condemned Tanzania’s invasion). It would not get out of the debt resulting from the war until Uganda paid off the last of Tanzania’s debt in 2007.

The current president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, is a veteran of this war. Gaddafi, who was a major ally of Idi Amin, was killed in Sirte, Libya, after 42 years of rule and international misadventures like this.