Did you know that #Colorado barely failed to pass a referendum which would have removed “involuntary servitude” as punishment for crime from the state constitution?
Amendment T failed 50.2%-49.7% on November 8. #13th #copol
Another Police Shooting of the Unarmed
There is an early and sudden death that awaits us.
It can come from the police, the road-raging vigilante, or the fool from down the street with a beef.
Our name will be a hashtag, and justice will not come.
We will be told that our minds and bodies are the problem. We will be told that our bodies deserve death because our culture is a problem. We will be tone-policed, gaslighted and denied legitimacy in our rage.
We’re supposed to kiss the asses of the comfortable, to not “erase the history” of the oppressor, to be grateful for basic ethical behavior.
Maybe if we disappeared from this country, if we dispersed from these shores to diaspora far afield, the insults to our intelligence will stop. Maybe the insulting injustice will stop.
To see the day when we’ll stop being the red-headed bastard child who is hated when defiant but idolized when dead. I look forward to this.
#WalterScott #JoeMcKnight
More-Connected Southern Cities
Atlanta has a lot in common with the “coastal elite”. So do Charlotte, and New Orleans, and Nashville, and Birmingham, and the big four metro areas of East Texas. Even Jackson, Mississippi is a small pocket of liberal politics.
But many of these cities are also well-connected to interstate highways, international airports and/or mass transit systems. They’re connected in ways that smaller cities like Columbus, Macon, Corpus Cristi, Huntsville, Mobile, Pensacola, Charleston, and Little Rock are not.
One thing that is on my wishlist for Georgia is an interstate highway that goes through Columbus to Macon to Augusta, so that Macon will be almost as well-connected to second-tier cities as Atlanta. It would also benefit third-tier cities like Milledgeville, Sandersville and Roberta.
The second issue I hope to see resolved is the dearth of under-100k cities in the area between Augusta, Macon, Albany, Valdosta and Savannah. Tifton and Valdosta only have 1 interstate running through their cities, and on either side there is a multitude of very small towns until you get to Savannah or the Alabama border (with the exception of Albany). I think Tifton or Valdosta are a good place to have another East-West interstate, running from Savannah through either of these cities to a major city in either Alabama or Florida. It would be good for the farming communities of southern Georgia and southern Alabama.
The Need for Liquid Democracy
So let’s talk about democracy as a tool of “small-r” republican governance, and what it is in 2016.
Right now, democracy is a zero-sum game. The two models of democratic exercise we use – representative and direct – are limited in their scalability.
Representative democracy is cheap but hierarchical, in which we select a very small class of people – legislators – to vote on the bills that regular folk don’t have the time to properly process.
Direct democracy is broad but expensive, in which every eligible voter is encouraged to vote, whether or not one is fully informed about a bill or has had a chance to properly process the legislation.
So I think that we need to talk about a third type of democracy, a democracy which takes from the strengths of both representative and direct democracy. One that I have read about is known as “delegative democracy”, also known as “liquid democracy”.
A liquid democracy would look like this: a referendum in which you – Voter 1 – can designate someone else – Voter 2 – to cast a vote for the referendum on your behalf, and Voter 2 can also designate someone else – Voter 3 – to cast the votes which have been assigned to Voter 2 to be cast. A person can accumulate multiple votes from many people to be cast on their behalf, but every individual can take their vote back to vote by oneself for the referendum.
It’s proxy voting on steroids, and it’s being used and advocated by several branches of the Pirate Party movement in Europe for their in-party decision making process. I think it is a third way of decision making that we should hear about more in the years to come.
I think it would also be adaptable to multiple levels of democratic governance, from the national to the municipal. And, even better, I think it would allow for public referendums to be held every day, almost as frequently as in a representative legislature.
If you’re studying political science, this is something to look into.
OK, so as pointed out to me by Robbin Shipp, there have been at least 7 DNC chairs who also concurrently served as elected officials:
- Calvin Brice (1889 – 1892), also U.S. Senator from Ohio (1891-1897)
- James Kimbrough Jones (1896–1904), also U.S. Senator from Arkansas (1885-1903)
- Henry Jackson (1960-1961), also U.S. Senator from Washington (1953-1983)
- Fred Harris (1969-1970), also U.S. Senator from Oklahoma (1964-1973)
- Chris Dodd (1995-1997), also U.S. Senator from Connecticut (1981-2011)
- Tim Kaine (2009-2011), also Governor of Virginia (2006-2010)
- Debbie Wasserman Schultz (2011-2016), also Representative from Florida (2005-present)
Here are also some of the RNC’s chairs-cum-electeds:
- Bob Dole (1971-1973), also U.S. Senator from Kansas (1969-1996)
- Jim Gilmore (2001), also Governor of Virginia (1998-2002)
- Mel Martínez (2006-2007), also U.S. Senator from Florida (2005-2009)
I’m trying to use the word “Aboriginal Americans” more often.
Those who are aggrieved by “political correctness” often claim that because they were born here, they are de facto “native”.
Also, “anti-white discrimination” and “reverse racism” and all that.
So. Not even “Native American” is safe anymore.
Nancy Pelosi Stays On
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
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:
- expanding ‘eligible voters’ ability to participate in the caucuses in caucus states, a Clinton campaign concern
- 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
- 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”
“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
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.
