[NYTr] Bamboozling the Left

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[A thoughtful introduction by Bill Koehnlein on 3 "alternative"
candidates (Paul, Kucinich, McKinney) leaving out the only other
alternative, Mike Gravel. This is followed by an anti-Ron Paul article
(previously distributed but we're resending it) and an article on
McKinney. Note that all of the alternatives, except McKinney, are not
truly independent candidates. They are running for the nomination of
the One Party with Two Names. The major issues here are racism and
social justice. -NY Transfer]

sent by Bill Koehnlein - Dec 31, 2007


Bamboozling the Left

"Beelzebub! I've been hoodwinked!" --W.C. Fields

It's not too much longer before we scamper into the Iowa caucus, that
first formal ritual of the presidential campaign, and then onward and
eastward to New Hampshire and beyond. Some people on the left have
flirted with Barack Obama as the great black hope, a few with John
Edwards as the hope of labor and populism, and the worst of us have
embraced Hillary Clinton as the hope of who-knows-what.

Then there is Ron Paul. He has consistently, and without equivocation,
opposed the war against Iraq; he has opposed the Patriot Act and other
repressive laws; he is not the best friend of the megacorporations, and
he seemingly takes the side of the little person against an immense,
oppressive governmental apparatus. For those reasons, Ron Paul has a
certain appeal to a sector of the left and his candidacy has been
endorsed by more than a few progressives.

It's befallen our friends at ISO to give us the lowdown on the real Ron
Paul, in Sherry Wolf's informative article (appended below). First, Ron
Paul is *not* a progressive; he is a right-wing libertarian, very much
in the mold of Pat Buchanan. For Paul, property rights are fundamental
and all his political positions flow directly from that ideology. While
the media--and the Paul campaign committee--have played up his anti-war,
pro-civil liberties positions (and those are sometimes a contradictory
jumble), there has been silence concerning the fundamental tenet of Ron
Paul's political and economic philosophy (and political agenda):
"Liberty means free-market capitalism." Similarly, his outright
reactionary positions on various issues have been ignored: abortion
(it's murder); race ("If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged
male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.");
immigration (lock the borders); welfare rights and entitlement programs
(end them and put the bums to work); the insurance industry (AIDS
activists impinge on "the rights of insurance company owners"); public
education (stop funding it with our taxes); labor rights (end both the
minimum wage and OSHA protections); ad nauseum.

Don't be bamboozled.

OK. We've dispensed with Ron Paul, so who remains? Dennis Kucinich? He
seems to be OK, though admittedly I haven't done any research on him,
haven't looked for muck where muck might be. He too has consistently
opposed the war, and the Patriot Act and its many afterbirths; unlike
Ron Paul, he supports labor rights, universal health care, abortion
rights and would give the bums' rush to Cheney and Bush (in the form of
an impeachment resolution he introduced in the House of
Representatives). He has a firm ecological awareness. His progressive
credentials seem to be bona fide.

So what's the problem with Kucinich?

Mostly, it's that he is a Democrat, and is part and parcel of the same
corrupt machine that helped bring us further and deeper into the vast
shit field we're in.

I've never become especially excited about electoral campaigns and
politics, and have been involved in only a handful of them--and only in
a very peripheral, limited capacity--in the last forty or more years.
While I don't think electoral politics are the most useful or effective
form of activity I'm not totally dismissive of such efforts either;
they do have some kind of place in left activism. I do vote, and I'm a
registered member of the Green Party in New York State.

While I think Dennis Kucinich is a fundamentally decent person, and
while he doesn't seem to carry with him too many political deficiencies
(at least not in terms of issue-oriented politics) his candidacy for the
Democratic nomination is a dead-end one. If electoral work is the form
of action Kucinich has chosen it would certainly be more productive for
him to leave that horrible party and work with others from the broad
array of similar social movements to build a truly independent,
progressive party.

Fortunately, we have a presidential candidate with exceptional politics,
as well as political and electoral experience, who is committed to
political action outside of the Republicratic Party, and is trying to
help build a viable third party. Her name is Cynthia McKinney (see
http://www.runcynthiarun.org) and she's seeking the Green Party
nomination. Her campaign is one that I could embrace with some
enthusiasm. (See the essay by Lenore Daniels, following Sherry Wolf's
article, below.)

As noted, I'm a registered Green, although my party involvement has
consisted of not much more than voting for Green candidates, attending a
few meetings, and working--minimally--on a couple of Green Party
campaigns. The NYS Green Party seems to be a dysfunctional organization,
and there are some severe political problems with it. While it is very
strong on war and peace issues, and, of course, on ecological ones, the
Green platform on social justice questions is nebulous and abstract; it
hasn't done much to introduce those questions into its organization or
promote debate among its base and beyond, to the electorate it is trying
to reach. Its position on race and racism is abysmal; the party has few
people of color as members, and the number of African Americans enrolled
in the party are fewer still.

In past campaigns the party made some strategic blunders, and it crossed
the line of opportunism when it ran Al Lewis, who had absolutely nothing
to offer other than name recognition, for governor some years ago.
Similarly, the Green Party should not have chosen Ralph Nader to be its
presidential candidate (full disclosure: I *did* vote for him); instead,
it should have nominated someone who would have supported the Green
Party platform in full, which Nader did not--at least not in any
meaningful way. Rather, Nader used the Green Party as his own personal
vehicle and his campaign became one focused on electing Ralph Nader and
*not* one focused on building a cohesive and viable third party.

As to the crucial issue of race and racism the Green Party is a white
party. It was founded by people from the white left, and, to perhaps a
lesser extent, from the ecology movement upstate. As such, the principal
issues taken up by the party, and the principal constituencies to which
it appeals, have all been drawn from and focused on the white
progressive community.

With a possible McKinney candidacy the Green Party can move itself into
position to be a party for everyone, and not for a limited segment of
the left. To do so, of course, it has to tackle those hard and thorny
issues of race and racism, and the party must seek ways to open itself
to people of color--Hispanics, African Americans, Asians--and,
crucially, it must re-create its platform so that issues of importance
to PoC also become issues of importance to the party itself, and
central to its agenda. This is not to dismiss the good work the party
has done in the areas of ecology and the environment and war and
peace--issues that certainly cross the color boundaries and affect
everyone. But to grow, to become a significant third party and
political factor in New York the party needs to transform itself into a
multiracial and multicultural coalition. It cannot remain a white-led
party, allowing token admittance to PoC on white terms rather than on
terms PoC choose and elucidate for themselves.

McKinney's candidacy is an important one, and one that will help the
left to both grow in numbers and to move in a critical, non-exclusionary
direction. While she will naturally be the most visible face in this
campaign, the underlying premise and dynamics will go far beyond the
candidate herself, to the more significant issue of building a
democratic, multiracial movement that actually means something and has
the power to mobilize people and effect some positive change.

Let's see if the left is ready for all this.

--Bill Koehnlein

*****

The Freedom to Starve: Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul

CounterPunch
December 12, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/wolf12122007.html


The Freedom to Starve: Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul

by Sherry Wolf

"Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum," goes the revamped aphorism.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's surprising stature among a
small but vocal layer of antiwar activists and leftist bloggers appears
to bear this out.

At the October 27, 2007, antiwar protests in dozens of cities noticeable
contingents of supporters carried his campaign placards and circulated
sign-up sheets. The Web site antiwar.com features a weekly Ron Paul
column. Some even dream of a Left-Right gadfly alliance for the 2008
ticket. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, liberal maverick and
Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich told supporters in late
November he was thinking of making Ron Paul his running mate if he were
to get the nomination.

No doubt, the hawkish and calculating Hillary Rodham Clinton and flaccid
murmurings of Barack Obama, in addition to the uninspiring state of the
antiwar movement that backed a pro-war candidate in 2004, help fuel the
desperation many activists feel. But leftists must unequivocally reject
the reactionary libertarianism of this longtime Texas congressman and
1988 Libertarian Party presidential candidate.

Ron Paul's own campaign Web site reads like the objectivist rantings of
Ayn Rand, one of his theoretical mentors. As with the Atlas Shrugged
author's other acolytes, neocon guru Milton Friedman and former Federal
Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, Paul argues, "Liberty means free-market
capitalism." He opposes "big government" and in the isolationist fashion
of the nation's Pat Buchanans, he decries intervention in foreign
nation's affairs and believes membership in the United Nations
undermines U.S. sovereignty.

Naturally, it is not Ron Paul's paeans to the free market that some
progressives find so appealing, but his unwavering opposition to the war
in Iraq and consistent voting record against all funding for the war.
His straightforward speaking style, refusal to accept the financial
perks of office, and his repeated calls for repealing the Patriot Act
distinguish him from the snakeoil salesmen who populate Congress.

Paul is no power-hungry, poll-tested shyster. Even the liberalish chat
show hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar on "The View" gave a friendly
reception to Paul's folksy presentation, despite his paleoconservative
views on abortion, which he--a practicing obstetrician--argues is
murder.

Though Paul is unlikely to triumph in the primaries, it is worth taking
stock not only of his actual positions, but more importantly the
libertarian underpinnings that have wooed so many self-described
leftists and progressives. Because at its core, the fetishism of
individualism that underlies libertarianism leads to the denial of
rights to the very people most radicals aim to champion--workers,
immigrants, Blacks, women, gays, and any group that lacks the economic
power to impose their individual rights on others.

Ron Paul's positions

A cursory look at Paul's positions, beyond his opposition to the war and
the Patriot Act, would make any leftist cringe.

Put simply, he is a racist. Not the cross-burning, hood-wearing kind to
be sure, but the flat Earth society brand that imagines a colorblind
world where 500 years of colonial history and slavery are dismissed out
of hand and institutional racism and policies under capitalism are
imagined away. As his campaign Web site reads:

"The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited,
constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights
rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which
rewards individual achievement and competence--not skin color, gender,
or ethnicity."

Paul was more blunt writing in his independent political newsletter
distributed to thousands of supporters in 1992. Citing statistics from a
study that year produced by the National Center on Incarceration and
Alternatives, Paul concluded: "Given the inefficiencies of what DC
laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely
assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are
semi-criminal or entirely criminal." Reporting on gang crime in Los
Angeles, Paul commented: "If you have ever been robbed by a black
teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."

His six-point immigration plan appears to have been cribbed from the
gun-toting vigilante Minutemen at the border. "A nation without secure
borders is no nation at all. It makes no sense to fight terrorists
abroad when our own front door is left unlocked," reads his site. And he
advocates cutting off all social services to undocumented immigrants,
including hospitals, schools, clinics, and even roads (how would that
work?).

"The public correctly perceives that neither political party has the
courage to do what is necessary to prevent further erosion of both our
border security and our national identity," he wrote in a 2005 article.
"Unfortunately, the federal government seems more intent upon guarding
the borders of other nations than our own." The article argues that,
"Our current welfare system also encourages illegal immigration by
discouraging American citizens from taking low-wage jobs." The
solution: end welfare so that everyone will be forced to work at slave
wages. In order that immigrants not culturally dilute the nation, he
proposes that "All federal government business should be conducted in
English."

Though he rants about his commitment to the Constitution, he introduced
an amendment altering the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing citizenship
to anyone born in the United States, saying in a 2006 article:
"Birthright citizenship, originating in the 14th amendment, has become
a serious cultural and economic dilemma for our nation. We must end the
perverse incentives that encourage immigrants to come here illegally,
including the anchor baby incentive."

Here we come up against the limits of libertarianism--Paul wants a
strong state to secure the borders, but he wants all social welfare
expenditures eliminated for those within them.

Paul is quite vocal these days about his rank opposition to
abortion--"life begins at conception," he argues. He promotes a "states'
rights" position on abortion--that decades old hobgoblin of civil rights
opponents. And he has long opposed sexual harassment legislation,
writing in his 1988 book Freedom Under Siege (available online), "Why
don't they quit once the so-called harassment starts?" In keeping with
his small government worldview, he goes on to argue against the
government's right "to tell an airline it must hire unattractive women
if it does not want to."

In that same book, written as the AIDS crisis was laying waste to the
American gay male population prompting the rise of activist groups
demanding research and drugs, Paul attacked AIDS sufferers as "victims
of their own lifestyle." And in a statement that gives a glimpse of the
ruling-class tyranny of individualism he asserts that AIDS victims
demanding rushed drug trials were impinging on "the rights of insurance
company owners."

Paul wants to abolish the Department of Education and, in his words,
"end the federal education monopoly" by eliminating all taxes that go
toward public education and "giving educational control back to
parents." Which parents would those be? Only those with the leisure
time, educational training, and temperament commensurate with home
schooling! Whatever real problems the U.S. education system suffers
from--and there are many--eliminating 99 percent literacy rates that
generations of public education has achieved and tossing the children
of working parents out of the schools is not an appealing or viable
option.

Paul also opposes equal pay for equal work, a minimum wage, and,
naturally, trade unions. In 2007, he voted against restricting
employers' rights to interfere in union drives and against raising the
federal minimum wage to $7.25. In 2001, he voted for zero-funding for
OSHA's Ergonomics Rules, instead of the $4.5 billion. At least he's
consistent.

Libertarians like Paul are for removing any legislative barriers that
may restrict business owners' profits, but are openly hostile to
alleviating economic restrictions that oppress most workers. Only a
boss could embrace this perverse concept of "freedom."

Individualism versus collectivism

There is a scene in Monty Python's satire Life of Brian where Brian, not
wanting to be the messiah, calls out to the crowd: "You are all
individuals." The crowd responds in unison: "We are all individuals."

Libertarians, using pseudo-iconoclastic logic, transform this comical
send-up of religious conformity into their own secular dogma in which we
are all just atomized beings. "Only an individual has rights," not
groups such as workers, Blacks, gays, women, and minorities, Ron Paul
argues. True, we are all individuals, but we didn't just bump into one
another. Human beings by nature are social beings who live in a
collective, a society. Under capitalism, society is broken down into
classes in which some individuals--bosses, for example--wield
considerably more power than others--workers.

To advocate for society to be organized on the basis of strict
individualism, as libertarians do, is to argue that everyone has the
right to do whatever he or she wants. Sounds nice in the abstract,
perhaps. But what happens when the desires of one individual infringe
on the desires of another? Libertarians like Paul don't shy away from
the logical ramifications of their argument. "The dictatorial power of
a majority" he argues ought to be replaced by the unencumbered power of
individuals--in other words, the dictatorial power of a minority.

So if the chairman of Dow Chemical wants to flush his company's toxic
effluence into rivers and streams, so be it. If General Motors wants to
pay its employees starvation wages, that's their right too. Right-wing
libertarians often appear to not want to grapple with meddlesome things
like economic and social power. As the bourgeois radical Abraham Lincoln
observed of secessionist slaveowners, "The perfect liberty they seek is
the liberty of making slaves of other people."

Too much government?

Unwavering hostility to government and its collection of taxes is
another hallmark of libertarianism. Given the odious practices of
governments under capitalism, their repugnant financial priorities, and
bilking of the lower classes through taxation it's hardly surprising
that libertarians get a hearing.

But the conclusion that the problem is "big government" strips the
content from the form. Can any working-class perspective seriously
assert that we have too much government involvement in providing health
care? Too much oversight of the environment, food production, and
workplace safety? Would anyone seriously consider hopping a flight
without the certainty of national, in fact international, air traffic
control? Of course not. The problem doesn't lie with some abstract
construct, "government," the problem is that the actual class dynamics
of governments under capitalism amount to taxing workers and the poor
in lieu of the rich and powerful corporations and spending those
resources on wars, environmental devastation, and the enrichment of a
tiny swath of society at the expense of the rest of us.

Ron Paul argues, "Government by majority rule has replaced strict
protection of the individual from government abuse. Right of property
ownership has been replaced with the forced redistribution of wealth and
property". Few folks likely to be reading this publication will agree
that we actually live in a society where wealth and property are
expropriated from the rich and given to workers and the poor. Even the
corporate media admit that there has been a wholesale redistribution of
wealth in the opposite direction. But Paul exposes here the class
nature of libertarianism--it is the provincial political outlook of the
middle-class business owner obsessed with guarding his lot. As online
anti-libertarian writer Ernest Partridge puts it in "Liberty for some":

"Complaints against 'big government' and 'over-regulation,' though often
justified, also issue from the privileged who are frustrated at finding
that their quest for still greater privileges at the expense of their
community are curtailed by a government which, ideally, represents that
community. Pure food and drug laws curtail profits and mandate tests as
they protect the general public."

In fact, the libertarians' opposition to the government, or the state if
you will, is less out of hostility to what the state actually does than
who is running it. Perhaps this explains Paul's own clear contradiction
when it comes to abortion, since his opposition to government
intervention stops at a woman's uterus. But freedom for socialists has
always been about more than the right to choose masters. Likewise, Paul
appears to be for "small government" except when it comes to using its
power to restrict immigration. His personal right to not have any
undocumented immigrants in the U.S. seems to trump the right of free
movement of individuals, but not capital, across borders.

Right-wing libertarians, quite simply, oppose the state only insofar as
it infringes the right of property owners.

Left-Right alliance?

Some antiwar activists and leftists desperate to revitalize a flagging
antiwar movement make appeals to the Left to form a Left-Right bloc with
Ron Paul supporters. Even environmental activist and left-wing author
Joshua Frank, who writes insightful and often scathing attacks on
liberal Democrats' capitulations to reactionary policies, recently
penned an article citing--though not endorsing--Paul's campaign in
calling for leftist antiwar activists to reach out to form a sort of
Left-Right antiwar alliance. He argues, "Whether we're beer swilling
rednecks from Knoxville or mushroom eatin' hippies from Eugene, we need
to come together," ("Embracing a new antiwar movement").

Supporters of Ron Paul who show up to protests should have their
reactionary conclusions challenged, not embraced. Those of his
supporters who are wholly ignorant of his broader politics beyond the
war, should be educated about them. And those who advocate his noxious
politics, should be attacked for their racism, immigrant bashing, and
hostility to the values a genuine Left champions. The sort of
Left-Right alliance Frank advocates is not only opportunistic, but is
also a repellent to creating the multiracial working-class movement
that is sorely needed of we are to end this war. What Arabs, Blacks,
Latinos--and antiracist whites, for that matter--would ever join a
movement that accommodates to this know-nothing brand of politics?

Discontent with the status quo and the drumbeat of electoralism is
driving many activists and progressives to seek out political
alternatives. But libertarianism is no radical political solution to
inequality, violence, and misery. When the likes of Paul shout: "We
need freedom to choose!" we need to ask, "Yes, but freedom for whom?"
Because the freedom to starve to death is the most dubious freedom of
all.

[Sherry Wolf is on the editorial board of the International Socialist
Review. She can be reached at sherry at internationalsocialist.org]

*****

McKinney, the Green Party and the Reconstruction Movement Represent Our
Resistance

The Black Commentator
December 20, 2007
http://www.blackcommentator.com/258/258_represent_our_resistance_mckinney.html


McKinney, the Green Party and the Reconstruction Movement Represent Our
Resistance

by Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, Ph.D

I should like
to be able
to write a poem
which was so beautiful, so rapturous
inspiring and profound
like the People’s victory

A poem which captures
The reason why we won:
it was the People who fought--
the whole people, guided
by the correct line

Somebody's going to write it someday,
this life that already exists
before it is a poem.

-Jorge Rebelo, "A Poem Yet to be Written," Mozambique

"The identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause," along
with the creation of a "controlled media" in order to point out the
"enemies and scapegoats" (Lawrence W. Britt, "Fascism Anyone," Free
Inquiry), represent two principles of a fascist state. This is one
explanation for the presence of people living on the "edge" and no one
seems to care.

Some of us on the Left measure our engagement with the struggle by
remembering Malcolm X, who made no distinction between his personal
interests and his public advocacy. He, we say, lived on the "edge." Many
Black, Latino/a, Native Americans, working-class, and poor still live,
teetering on the edge of cliff, driven there by a government agenda of
genocide and social atmosphere of fear. Leaning too far toward the abyss
will result in a neck caught in a dangling noose. With whites and kin at
their backs, these people feel the pressure not to live (in a society
taught to think "bootstraps!") but to die, to fall among the others
dangling corpses, seen by witnesses to this human tragedy.

At a distance, standing behind podiums, before flags and cameras,
Republicans and Democrats declare their loyalty to the Empire and
Christianity, while the people on the edge live everyday as if in a war
zone. There's the effort to educate children in schools where the fear
of these children is as massive as it is unrealistic and consequently,
reveals a decision, made in advance merely to harbor them until their
rebellion makes them ripe for the prison industrial complex. They fear
this outcome, those on the cliff's edge, while scrambling for someone to
care for children at home or riding the bus to the next apartment
interview to find a home.  And today, too, there's another application
to complete at the department store employment desk or at the factory.
There's piece work someone mentioned and a walk of blocks to get there
to stand in line. There's passing people on the edge, too, who just
gave up yesterday, last month, last year, years ago, and they work
bottles of whiskey and talk alone of giving way to the noose. Someone
has a phone and there's enough change to pay them to call the aid
office or FEMA, again, or Mr. or Ms. Landlord, again, because the hole
where the water is leaking down is larger now than the first call made
months ago. There's buy the milk, cheese, and eggs for the children or
help pay for the medicine moma needs for her out-of-control blood
pressure.

Leadership among these people has historically been exceptional, not
because leaders wore Baroni suits or shared King's cadence. They don't
drive up to the edge: on the precipice, they stand out front of the
people, risking limb and life to challenge nooses they grab and toss
aside, eulogizing the dead in the hope of new life, standing straight,
to force to straight-standing among the people. The people have their
backs because they are the people, indistinguishable from the other,
identical because their interests are the interests of the people and,
empowered by this knowledge, they (the people and the leaders) spit in
faces of the media puppet masters and turn to face the people.

Sen. Feinstein, Rep. Harman, and others, diligently working to pass
Homegrown Terrorist legislation, receive a nod from House Speaker Pelosi
who, in turn, winks at King George and Darth Vader. The people and their
leaders know prosecution under Homeland Security is yet another
indication that COINTELPRO continues for them, and no cameras will
capture this state-sanctioned attacks against them. Long time community
activist, Curtis Muhammad, recently wondered if "poor black people have
been so vilified and criminalized that they are completely off the
radar even of the so-called left?" ("Farewell Letter," November 12,
2007). And it is not intended that the people or their leaders be seen
or heard, for even their protest is interrogated and vilified. John
Conroy, the reporter who told the story of the practice of torture
against over 100 Black men by the Chicago Police Department in the
1980s, spoke of the initial "dead silence" from the mainstream media
and the Chicago Police Department (Democracy Now!, December 13, 2007).
"Capitalism is the systemic terrorism against the poor," writes Black
Commentator Editorial Board Member and Columnist, Larry Pinkney
("Capitalism, COINTELPRO, and the Torture of Justice").

I often hear liberal radio hosts ask their audiences what makes people
on the "right" vote against their interests. It is a rhetorical
question that they don't want answered because they round up the
liberal left and flutter in circular chatter around the commercial
selling of the latest car or cruise or restaurant experience until time
is up and night falls and they ask again in the morning. Those who
could answer are dismissed or never called upon to speak from the point
of lived experience. The people, the Blacks, Latino/a, Native
Americans, working class and poor, living day-to-day on the edge, is
the answer. The people themselves, their existence, propels votes for a
government of law and order, of Nixon, of Reagan, of Bush, who, in
turn, speak of more police and detention camps, of less money for
education, health care, day care, affordable housing after
gentrification. Human Rights groups have called HUD's plans to demolish
low income housing projects "an act of racial cleansing," but who is
reading these reports? Of course, there is no talk of abolishing racial
disparities between crack and cocaine arrests or of employment
advantages for whites. But, let's rise to broadcast fame with talk of
borders, of privatization, and of corporate big profits. Let's hear
media announcers, paid with the blood money of mega-corporations, never
talk or show evidence of chemical waste sites that just happen to be
situated in Black communities, or talk or show evidence of inhumane
high energy bills and the corpses of the elderly dead, and no, never
talk or show the people confronting bulldozers at their backs or bank
collectors chanting into phone, "sub-prime loan--gotcha!" Promote war,
of course, and fear of Osama riding up to the local mall. Always more
war to justify in religious allegory and supported by Blackwater and
Halliburton and their interests.

It is not wonder, then, that the U.S. Human Rights Network, a coalition
of 250 social justice and human rights groups across the nation, issued
a report December 10, 2007, in which it cited that their "analysis
reveals that the Bush Administration is utterly out of touch with the
reality of racial discrimination in America," according to Ajamu
Baraka, the Executive Director of USHRN. In contrast to the USHRN
report, filed with the United Nations, the U.S. State Department's
report on race "reads like a fantasy," Baraka claims, "unfortunately a
fantasy that is too often experienced as a nightmare for Americans of
color."

Even this report is of no interest to the average American citizen. The
lived experience of the people living on the edge and their leaders
haunts the average American because their presence speaks to--with not
even a mouth at a podium--the contradictions inherent in the Empire's
grand narrative of fantasy. The interest of the people and their
leaders are simply not those of the white ruling class. Whites of the
middle class and even many of their Black and Latino/a counterparts
believe that in the end, it will all work out for them and their
leaders in government and business. They continue to believe, even when
their jobs are outsourced, and when there are no nuclear programs in
Iran. They continue to believe in the King and Empire even when torture
(conducted by police departments, supported by the FBI and federal
justice departments, using cattle prods and plastic bags and water and
sticks) sounds like and smells like the practice of spilling blood in
Guantanamo and foreign Black sites operated by the U.S. They will sing
"Happy Days are Here Again," and seem to the people on the edge
anything but Christian, anything but human.

Most white voters vote to maintain the racial order from whence comes
all their power and privilege. They vote their interests. They think,
and this thinking is not under threat of criminalization by HR 1955 or
S1959 Violent Radicalization and Homeland Terrorism Bill, they
think--white America.  With all due respect to the insightful work of
Naomi Klein, most Black citizens in the U.S. have been accustomed to
disaster capitalism for a long, long time. Life for many Blacks, for
generations, has been one long experience of the disaster of
capitalism, the vulture spirit always at their backs, represented by
entrepreneurs who think the "American Dream" and speak the language of
money, for as white America can, they profit, profit, profit!

In the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, most whites are still
able to see past his brown skin, to their vision of white America. He
speaks the language of corporations, of national defense, and of a
mumble-jumble health care, much like Hillary Clinton. Obama has no
interest in the grand-scale crime committed in New Orleans against the
Black and poor, threatened with the demolishing of their HUD homes.
With Obama, they can remain comfortably colorblind because he does not
threaten their interests. He does not stand on the edge with the
people, who he does not know anymore than do his constituents and
partners, Bill Clinton's gang, who now advise him. If only Obama went
to the people in just the one community of New Orleans' Ninth Ward, if
only Obama stood alongside community leaders and the people, and think,
while you still can, what would happen with the people living on the
edge and what would happen among those in the capitalist mainstream,
what would the media master puppeteers say of Obama? The answer would
not be on Oprah's show tomorrow because it is a question that each of
us knows we can answer without Oprah or O'Reilly's help. If only he
made the cameras that follow him point to the injustice of Mycal Bell
in jail and the charges against these 6 Jena children or to the
life-long attempt to prosecute the San Francisco 8, even when there is
no evidence and there has not been any evidence for 37 years. Obama
could appear in Chicago tomorrow and stand with the four Black men who
filed suit against the Chicago Police and ask, what is the meaning of
delaying justice for these men? But Oprah and the corporate media can't
air that Obama. He does not exist because he has never been a leader of
the people. Obama advances the tenets of S1959 Violent
Radicalization/Homegrown Terrorism that would control the very thought
of protest! ("Obama Supports Homegrown Terrorism," Jessica Lee,
Indypendent News).

Who will speak of the interests of the Black, Latino/a, working class,
and poor? Who will do more than speak?

To use the words of long time San Francisco activist, Roland Sheppard,
former Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney, has decided that she "can't
reform a deformed organization"--this in reference to McKinney's
departure from the Democratic Party. She announced her bid for
president in 2008, running on the Green Party ticket. McKinney was here
in Madison, Wisconsin last week at the invitation of the local Green
Party. Local Green Party leader, Larry Dooley, said that he believes
McKinney "agreed to run as a Green (maybe, in part, because of the work
that Malik and others are doing in New Orleans) so she is willing to
give us a chance." Malik Rahm, founder and head of Commongrounds in New
Orleans, is a firm member of the Green Party. "If McKinney becomes a
candidate, I will become involved in her campaign," Rahm told me. "The
Green Party is a global political party" with branches outside the U.S.
"It is the only party," Rahm added, "advocating for saving our
environment. Fighting for human rights is crucial, but if you can't
breathe or can't drink water, you are in trouble," he said. Rahm is
aware that the Green Party New Orleans has a better representation of
Black members than in other branches throughout the U.S. Rahm
acknowledges that we "live in a racist society," but he is committed to
making the Green Party "the type of Party that it could be." In turn,
the National Green Party, "as a whole," Rahm pointed out, "is missing a
golden opportunity" if it does not reach out to bring in African
Americans.

While Malik Rahm believes that this "is no time to organize new
parties," New Orleans is, nonetheless, the home of a new grassroots
party formed from existing organizations--the Greens of New Orleans and
People's Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF), and others. The Reconstruction
Party (RP) also talked of McKinney running for president on their
ticket. According to Bill Leumer, "The Reconstruction Party: A New
Political Development," the Reconstruction Party is a political party
attempting to "offer working class Blacks, working people in general
and the poor an alternative to the two capitalist parties." The RP
developed a year ago by "abandoned" victims of the hurricane. "The
Party focuses on issues fundamental to working people." Kali Akuno,
lead organizer of RP, said that the Party still had to work out its
"structural and political agenda," and, in the meantime, the RP expects
to meet with McKinney on December 20, 2007. Sakura Kone, Public
Communications, Commonground, looks favorably toward the efforts of the
RP party. While Commonground is a non-profit organization and,
therefore, can't endorse the Reconstruction Party or McKinney's
campaign for president, Kone recognizes that "Blacks have not
benefited" from the thirty years of Blacks in politics, and it is time,
at least for change.

McKinney's Power to the People Campaign offers that chance for change.
We would have to come together in the recognition that conflict and
confusion is a way of being because it is the way of capitalism for
those seeking Empire and for many on the Left seeking reforms that
maintain their way of life. McKinney's commitment to the struggle of
people on the edge justifies support for her campaign.

I was not in attendance at the press conference or at the
invitation-only session with "local activists" on December 11, 2007,
here in Madison, Wisconsin. The Left has a determined agenda in this
era of struggle against Empire. As one friend suggested, Blacks in
Madison experienced the "ghost of McKinney"--temporarily.

On that day, however, McKinney called on listeners of Wisconsin Public
Radio, to understand that the "immediate impact of the economic and
political outcome of Bush's agenda has fallen on Blacks and Latino/as.
The continued funding of war has stripped education, employment, health
care, and environmental programs in the Black communities," she said.
She spoke of the one million Black voters who had their votes "not
counted." McKinney said that she was angry that Blacks were
"disenfranchised" by people who denied them the vote. "In some
communities hope is extremely rare." But these are "the people whose
voices we must hear," McKinney told the radio audience. "War cannot be
our energy policy." She decided to campaign on the Green Party ticket,
because members of the Green Party "supported her in the past." We can
only hope that the Green Party recognizes not just an electoral
opportunity but a movement that would shift the people on the edge
agenda to the front and center of this campaign. Perhaps when McKinney
meets with the Reconstruction Party in New Orleans this week, they will
discuss ways of developing just such a Movement!

The peoples' leader "should be there standing in front of the bulldozers
in New Orleans, willing to get arrested," Roland Sheppard argues. "A
leader who won't get arrested," claims Sheppard, is no leader. He or she
is no leader of the people, no leader living with the people on the
edge. To some extent, McKinney, in Georgia and Washington D.C., has
been that kind of leader standing before the bulldozers of those who
would vilify and criminalize the Black community. Let's be pro-active
in Cynthia McKinney's agenda because it is the people's agenda.

Then, I think, we can imagine Malcolm smiling, for once.

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD,
has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance
criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist
sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its
antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to
justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and
community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of
an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher
communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr.
Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in
Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola
University, Chicago.]


-- 
Bill Koehnlein
bill at toplab.org

"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the
battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
                                        --George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

"...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult,
and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are
prevailing."
                                        --George W. Bush, June 28, 2005

"Our cause in Iraq is noble and necessary....America is engaged in a new
struggle that will set the course for a new century. We can and we will
prevail."
                                        --George W. Bush, January 10,
2007

"Prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy."
                                        --George W. Bush, March 19, 2007

+U.S. military fatalities through May 1, 2003: 140
+U.S. military fatalities through June 28, 2005: 1743
+U.S. military fatalities through January 10, 2007: 3017
+U.S. military fatalities through March 19, 2007: 3217
+U.S. military fatalities as of December 31, 2007: 3902 (this figure
exceeds the number of people killed in all of the incidents that
occurred on September 11, 2001)

+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of September 2004 (estimated by
The Lancet): 100,000+
+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of July 2006 (estimated by The
Lancet): 654,965
+Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion, as of December 31, 2007 (estimated
by Just Foreign Policy): 1,139,602*

*These figures are based on the number of deaths estimated in The Lancet
(the British medical journal) study through July 2006, and then updated
based "on how quickly deaths are mounting in Iraq". To do that, Just
Foreign Policy multiplies The Lancet figure as of July 2006 by the ratio
of current deaths reported by Iraq Body Count (IBC), divided by IBC
deaths as of July 1, 2006. The IBC numbers, considerably lower than
those cited by The Lancet, Opinion Research Business (a British polling
firm which estimated 1.2 million Iraqi deaths as of September 2007),
and even the Iraq Ministry of Health, are based on the number of
fatalities cited in various news reports and have been criticized, with
much justification, for not giving an accurate assessment of the real
Iraqi death count. The much more rigorous and statistically-reliable
study, conducted by teams from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia
University and Al-Mustansiriya University, and published in The Lancet
in September 2004, put the figure at around 100,000 civilians dead.
However, that data had been based on "conservative assumptions",
according to research team leader Les Roberts, and the actual count at
that time was credibly assumed to be significantly higher. For example,
The Lancet study's data greatly underestimated fatalities in Fallujah
due to the surveying problems encountered there at that time. The
second Lancet study, released on October 10, 2006, indicated that
654,965 "excess" deaths of Iraqis have occurred since the outbreak of
the aggression and genocide committed by the United States against the
people of Iraq. The current figures provided by Just Foreign Policy
seem to be logically consistent with the increasing rates of death from
2003 to 2004, and 2004 to 2006.

Sources: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
http://icasualties.org/oif/
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.zmag.org/lancet.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/Iraq_war.html
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6271
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041025/008279.html
http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf