Vision Circle

Voter Suppression Report

Prometheus 6 has an NAACP report about voter suppression. It falls much in line with my own comments.

But questions arise. At what point is voter suppression and intimidation important. If 7 voters out of every 100 are faced with intimidation tactics (which does not measure how many are actually turned back) what are we to make of that? To be sure from what I know about Florida, that's an easy one. As far as I'm concerned it is enough to call in international forces. And anytime you've got an entire campus told not to vote, there is a problem.

But I wonder how big a problem it'd be if similar attempts were conducted to suppress their vote? What would such attempts even look like anyway?

Cool Cities Mumbo Jumbo

Rustbelt cities like Detroit drained off thousands of folk like river water. Detroit used to hold 2 million people at its height. Now it has a population half that. What to do with the empty space?

A suggestion. With all of the talk about cities needing to bring "the creative class" to their centers, this approach sounds healthier, more sustainable, and closer in line with the future of cities.

The DNC

"They think the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their political, economic, and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on matters like health care and retirement security," he said. "Since most Americans are not that far to the right, they have to portray us Democrats as unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America."

Let me be clear. As a President, I hated Clinton's policies. I hated the way he scapegoated working class black people to pass his policies (and also to win the White House). I hated the way he misconstrued Sistah Souljah's comments after the disturbances in L.A. I hated the way he played Jesse (even though I don't have much love for Jesse either).

But LIKE Jesse, you can't sleep on him. Because every now and then Clinton makes a speech that makes everything so clear and crystalline, you got to bow down.

Gangs vs Cops vs Soldiers

Several years ago I had a brief correspondance with Monster Kody Scott aka Sanyika Shakur. He had spent a great deal of time in jail writing about his theories of cohesion - essentially rediscovering something that great military leaders have known through the ages: boys need men and will do anything for them.

Every once in a while I get tossed a question for a link to Scott/Shakur, but I have no idea where he is. I heard that he has been baited a number of times since his last release - shades of 90 day detentions in SA. However one place he and Donald Bakeer might be found is over at a new site pitched my way this morning: Streetgangs.com.

The Importance of Vote Suppression

"If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."

More here. I've already noted that the Carol Mosely Braun event I attended was cut short because of a bomb threat. These are the stakes we face.

Thoughts on Cosby and Bush

Today's version of The Black Slate deals with some random thoughts on Cosby and on the NAACP. Because Jelani, Neal (I think), and Izrael already offered their thoughts on homeboy I was going to take a pass. But when the Bush NAACP thing came up I thought there might be a way to weave the two in together. I don't like the NAACP as far as I can throw them, and to a certain degree I sympathize with Cobb when he throws down the gauntlet. I even agree a bit with McWhorter here.

But the bottom line is a simple one. In making the decision to speak to the Urban League instead, Bush is taking the line that he's taken for a while--that the poor shouldn't rely on government to deal with their problems. In as much as we need an inside/outside game, SOMEONE has to talk to Bush with that perspective in mind, and the Urban League is the best thing we've got going here. In fact, they are probably the closest thing to a conservative black organization that we have--Armstrong Williams and the rest of the black conservative crew don't really have mass black organizations to stand on.

However at the same time we need someone to push for changes in government policy. The Urban League doesn't do that. The NAACP barely does it. But right now, especially because of the loot they are giving out to organizers...I'll take them.

Fitting Cosby in was a bit of a stretch I think...but I was able to push his stomach in a bit and get him in there. With all of his bluster he is pretty much saying the same thing that the conservatives are saying anyway--fuck politics. The more I think about it the more we need conversation starters like this. All we need afterwards are the folks with policy proposals in hand for those in agreement with Cosby, and for those in disagreement.

As an aside I gave a few workshops at the League of Independent Voters Smackdown 2004. I have never been more hopeful in the future than I was seeing those young brothers and sisters. We've been waiting YEARS for them. As opposed to the pie in the sky approach taken by many (we want reparations NOW), they fully recognize that we're running a relay marathon, not a sprint. I can't wait.

The Future is Here

I remember when the University of Michigan added digital photographs to their ids. Made it so that your picture would be stored in the system, and you had to ask to have it removed. I pitched a fit, thinking about all the nefarious purposes that stored picture could be used for. By that time they had already begun to track our purchases, and our travel (to get into the dorms after hours instead of using a key, you had to use your id).

Of course I got used to it. We all did. And now that I'm on the other end, I have access to pictures of students and all types of sensitive data.

How long do we have before this becomes commonplace among professionals? How long before Falwell, Cokely, and the others tell folks to get their guns and watch out for the black copters?

'The' Black Vote

Dean Esmay analyzes the two party system vis a vis its seemingly fixed relationship to The Black Vote.

Fact is Republicans have learned through hard experience that no matter what they say, no matter how much money they spend, black people will not vote for them. So why try?

And why should Democrats ultimately really care what black voters want, so long as they know black people feel like they have nowhere else to go?

Gay voters need to learn the same lesson too. If Republicans know they can never get your vote, then quite seriously, why do they care what you think? I mean, other than to be nice? If you'll never support them, what motivation do they have to care what you think? About anything?

And you know, it really doesn't help much when the few blacks who do vote Republican get called Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimahs and sellouts.

He's being wry here so don't fret none. But his points are on target and generally observable. The parties are gaming the vote, and right now the party bosses don't seem concerned that their abstractions are incorrect because nothing seems to be changing.

On the Necessity of Knuckleheads

You know, I gotta admit when I am wrong, and I think I've been caught in something of a dilemma. That being the case, I tend to think the subject is exhausted. I keep torquing the nut until it doesn't move, then I back up off it a half-turn. And so I have to talk about it.

Spence, whom I salute again, mentions the following:

It was the knuckleheads that taught me the dozens--the value of using wordplay as a means of attack and defense. The knuckleheads taught me to stand up for what I believed in. The knuckleheads taught me what it meant to be confident in myself when all around me doubted. And it was the criminally minded knucklheads that taught me the value of having game even as they gave me strong anti-role models.

There's talk, now and again, about how many black middle class parents feel the necessity of sending their kids to live with their grandparents down South for the summer, or to stay with their ghetto cousins for a spell. Assuming these parents aren't complete idiots there is a reason I could agree with although I'd probably try to accomplish it a different way. That reason is to toughen up their otherwise dainty suburban offspring.

Lockheed, Race, and Mississippi

The Washington Post has moved to a pretty invasive signup process to get their news. This one is worth reading by hook or by crook. A snippet:

Lockheed Martin Corp., the Bethesda-based defense contracting giant, permitted a racially hostile work environment for black employees "to grow in intensity" at its Meridian, Miss., plant until an employee shot 14 workers -- 12 of them black -- there last summer, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation has found.

In most cases the EEOC is a political bureaucracy. During Republican administrations the high level bureaucrats are conservative, during Democratic administrations, the high level bureaucrats are moderate to liberal. At the lower levels? I'm not sure. But I would imagine this case to be extremely bad if it got passed the conservative bureaucrats running the EEOC now.

Wonder how long it'll take Discriminations to get to this one. I guess they're too busy reading social science fiction. The myth of Affirmative Action stigma is worthy of Bullfinch I think.