Tag Archives: politics

Black America Measured as the Next U.S. State

Politics, Uncategorized, , , ,

I remember reading this article from The Atlantic from a while back which thoroughly measured the economy and infrastructure of Black America as its own nation-state.

However, I don’t know if anyone has ever thought about if Black America were its own state within the Union – a majority-minority state demographically dominated but never self-governed at the state level by people of African descent.

But what if it were? What would be the prevailing politics of this state?

Let’s call it the 52nd state in the Union – the State of New Afrika. The 51st would be Puerto Rico.

In the State of New Afrika, how would Black Democrats govern and represent their districts? How would Black Republicans?

What would be the state of law enforcement in New Afrika? How much control would the majority-Black state government have over its majority-Black cities?

State governments have perhaps more control over the function of cities and their residents than the federal government does. The provision of funding for public schools, for law enforcement, for prisons (public or private), for water resources, for roads, for recreation, for environmental protections and so on. No city in the United States except for the District of Columbia (subject to Congress) has such a broad control over their infrastructure. The federal government is also hobbled in its ability to reach cities because of state government control.

So if Black America lopsidedly dwells in metropolitan areas, but these metropolitan areas’ statuses are ultimately determined at the state level where the majority of leaders are not of the same economic, ethnocultural or regional background, what does that say about how much control we actually have over our local communities and our welfare?

 

For Those Who Still Don’t Have a Choice

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Thinking about The Movement for Black Lives’ Vision for Black Lives manifesto and its inclusion of a pro-Dreamer/anti-Deportation plank.

One can argue this:

The ancestors of most slave-descended African-Americans did not choose to come here willingly. Legally, neither did Dreamers who were brought here as children.

I understand that Dreamers can more readily identify their country of ancestry. But their entire memory has been cultivated here in this country.

I understand that Dreamers have more of an opportunity to go back to their country of origin. But forcefully deporting someone who did not choose to come to this country is gratuitously cutting someone off from their de facto adoptive country.

The 14th Amendment was crafted to apply citizenship to people who didn’t end up here “the right way”, the most privileged way. It established birthright citizenship, which has now become a feature of naturalization for most countries in the Americas.

Some would want to eliminate or curtail birthright citizenship. I think it should be expanded to automatically naturalizing those who arrived in the U.S. as minors and have spent at least 5-10 years of their lives here.

That is the humane thing to do. #Vision4BlackLives

Larry Sanders Tearfully Casts Vote for Brother Bernie Sanders at DNC 2016

Factoid:

Larry Sanders, a social worker and academic who is a citizen of the UK and the U.S., is a member of both the Green Party of England and Wales and the U.S. Democratic Party. He has served as a Member of the Oxfordshire County Council (2005-2013) and ran for a seat in Parliament in 2015 on the Green ticket, coming in fifth to the Conservative winner. Larry’s son Jacob has also served on the Oxford City Council and ran in 2005 for Parliament as a Green.

I am very glad that Larry, who is 82, has lived long enough to cast this vote. I also feel that Larry is more free in the UK to vote his conscience than he is here in the US.

Looking Forward After the DNC

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I will continue to be proud of the work I did and the vote I cast for Bernie Sanders, but I look forward to what we can do under a Clinton presidency and a better-run Democratic Party. I’m proud of the work that David Smith has done on behalf of the Sanders campaign in Columbus and as a Sanders delegate to the DNC. I’m glad that Sanders delegates on the platform committee were able to make progressive lemonade out of what could have been a very moderate, weak lemon for the next four years.

Susana et al at the DNC who are aggrieved by the conduct of the contest and its result, the next four years present an opportunity for you. Take a cue from Ronald Reagan: when his candidate Goldwater lost in a landslide to Johnson in 1964, he and several other party activists – including Richard Viguerie, who used Goldwater’s direct mail list for years to come to support conservative causes of the day – fought to clear out the moderates – along with Nixon and Ford – and make the party into a hardcore, free-market, religious-conservative force. Reagan used this to win the governorship of California and then mount three candidacies for president.

If Clinton’s win is the last straw for you, then continue the work that Sanders fought for. Make Sanders’ platform viable on the downballot. Speak for harder-left progressive politics across the country. Fight for those values in places where single payer and public options have not penetrated the public mind. Appeal to those who have something they want to protect and serve. Change county party leadership. Distribute pamphlets, free booklets, direct mail and email newsletters to your friends – be they urban or rural – which explain your case for a progressive America. Change moderates and liberals into progressives and Democratic socialists.

Sanders awakened a progressive energy which was dormant for the time that President Obama has been in office. But that energy must now be flexed to change America for the foreseeable future. Our lives, our quality of life, our peace, our social justice, and our environment depend on what we do after this convention.

Let’s do the work.

Just thought about this:

Ethics are definitely an issue post-#DNCleak but there is no previous code of conduct that I can find to suppress perceived bias among party strategists and activists toward candidates, campaign staff and elected officials.

Rhetoric and ill intent among the top activists of the party during a nomination contest is what everyone’s rightfully angry about. But there is no prior standard for party activist behavior to measure these emails up against, so the resignation of DWS is simply a sop to both media and in-party activists after the fact. How do we measure (im)partiality?

DNC activists need an activist code of ethics/code of conduct to measure future perceptions of bias or outright (non-illegal) misconduct. Is anyone even advocating for this at #DNCinPhilly/ #DNCinPHL?

Or what about ya’ll? What do you think should go into a DNC (or any party’s) code of ethics?

Hold Fire on Donna Brazile

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Bernie supporters are already coming for #DonnaBrazile for saying that she’ll “cuss out” Sanders personally in the emails. Because of this, she’s now being called “corrupt”.

So because Donna uses curse words, Bernie supporters are mad at her? But her apology to Sanders for the “stupidity” in the #DNCleaks is not accepted?

You know who else is coming for Donna Brazile? Trump supporters on Twitter, with their “fat black woman” and “affirmative action” comments and “MOLON LABE/MAGA” in their profile.

Can’t please everyone. But it now smacks of racism, misogyny and hurt feelings over “classiness”. And the reaction against Brazile is typical of the flimsy definition of the word “corruption”.

Bernie got the scalp he explicitly wanted: that of DWS. The emails don’t show Brazile conspiring to undermine Sanders’ campaign, even in her personal mild disdain for the campaign.

Bernie people, “Basta”. This is embarrassing. We have a better DNC chair. Let’s move on.

Donna Brazile

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Donna Brazile should stay as long-term chair, IMO. Her resume without ever having held elected office:

  • Lobbied heavily to get MLK Day recognized as a federal holiday
  • Volunteered for Carter-Mondale in 1976 and 1980 as a teenager
  • first African-American woman to manage a major party presidential campaign (Al Gore, 2000)
  • Served as Chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Voting Rights Institute (2001-2009)
  • Previously interimed as chair between Kaine and Wasserman-Schultz in 2011
  • DNC Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation since 2009
  • Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government
  • Adjunct Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Georgetown University
  • Second African-American to serve in a chairship capacity since the late Ron Brown (1989-1993)
  • Brought up the issue of George H.W. Bush’s alleged extramarital affair which got her fired from Dukakis’ campaign in 1988, but which was later used by Bill Clinton (irony?) against the elder Bush in 1992.
  • Was instrumental in penalizing Florida and Michigan’s Democratic parties for moving their primaries against DNC rules in 2008.
  • Member of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Recovery Authority under Governor Blanco (2005-2009)
  • Says what she feels: “Look, I’m a woman, so I like Hillary. I’m black; I like Obama. But I’m also grumpy, so I like John McCain.” (2008)
  • Arguably the most powerful woman in the DNC for years.
  • NOT A POLITICIAN. HELLO?!

Police Abolition?

For the love of all that is just, don’t look at the comments. It’s a Fox News video.

I wouldn’t go as far as abolishing the police, but we should consider more non-armed LEOs.

In fact, non-armed officers already exist. They’re known as Community Service Officers, or CSO. CSO are non-sworn civilians who, besides filing reports, are dispatched largely for cases which don’t involve known direct suspect information. They are not deputized to arrest suspects, do not carry handcuffs, and do not carry weapons belts.

CSO typically number in the single digits in the police departments which employ CSO. I think they should be increased in number.

Do we have any CSOs here in Columbus’ Police Department?

Liquid/Delegative Democracy in Practice

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Reading up on delegative democracy aka liquid democracy. It’s essentially selecting someone to vote on your behalf in referendums, but where your selected proxy voter can also transfer their delegated votes to another proxy voter, and so on, while you can also take your vote back, override your proxy voter, and review your proxy voter’s voting record.

This is meant to essentially replace legislatures and make voting in referendums easier, quicker and more affordable.

To break down #LiquidDemocracy:

Imagine having a vote on a ballot measure, a referendum. Unlike many, you may not have the time to do research on the proposed law or vote on it.

So what can you do?

In #DelegativeDemocracy or Liquid Democracy, you can select someone – say, a friend who is more knowledgeable about the proposed law on the ballot – to cast your vote on your behalf. You might trust this person – Person A – to have more knowledge and be more responsible with your vote than you are. Person A is your proxy voter.

But what if Person A who you select knows someone else – Person B – who has even more knowledge about the proposed law and has publicly announced that they’ve cast their vote along the same lines as Person A? In Liquid Democracy, Person A can select Person B as their proxy voter, and can delegate Person B to cast your vote, Person A’s vote and the votes of others who’ve delegated their votes to that person.

In short, Liquid Democracy is a third way of passing laws, alongside representative democracy and direct democracy. It blends the two and moves us away from both the cost of direct democracy and the isolation of representative democracy.

The issue I have is this:

  • can this function without dependency upon the Internet to facilitate the voting process?
  • Also, what are the means by which this process can account for disadvantaged groups in a population or suspect classes whose rights may be targeted by referendum?
  • This may rid us of the need for gerrymandering and of competitive elections, but what will it do for minorities?