Oct. 30, 2018

Reality Check

 
The Real Deal in Politics
By A. Peter Bailey

 (TriceEdneyWire.com) - With the midterm elections Nov. 6, we Black folks should pay serious attention to observations made by Dr. William Scarborough, president of Wilberforce University and by Professor Harold Cruse in his book, "Plural but Equal".

In his February 11, 1899 speech at a Lincoln Day celebration, Dr. Scarborough included the following:

“I would be false to the race and my own convictions did I not pause to give the warning that, after all, neither parties nor politics alone can save the Negro. He needs to make a new start in his civil and political career. He must pay less attention to politics and more to business, to industry, to education, to the building up of a strong and sturdy manhood everywhere - to the assimilation generally of all that goes to demand the world’s respect and consideration. He must lop off, as so many incubi, the profession Negro office-seeker, the professional Negro office-holder, and the Negro politician who aspires to lead the race for the revenue that is in it. The best men, the wisest, the most unselfish, and above all, the men of the most profound integrity, and uprightness, must take the helm or retrogression will be the inevitable result.”

Professor Cruse, a visionary political theorist, noted the following in his 1987 book:

“In the game of electoral politics, black leadership has had no issues of political leverage, only numerical voting strength. However, this voting strength has never been predicated on a political power base grounded in tangible economic, administrative, cultural, or social policy issues with the viability of forcefully influencing public policy. Hence, merely winning public office became the one and only tangible goal for black political leaders. Beyond that, black office holders possessed only the pretense of being backed up by substantive political power bases representing issues that would impact on public policy. Thus, the continuing emphasis on the mobilization of black voting strength; thus the ongoing campaign for black voter registration; thus the empty threat that the maximization of black voting strength would somehow alter the course of American political history in race and minority-group issues. However, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964-1965 promised no such grandiose affirmation of potential black political power. While the Voting Rights Act of 1963 did in fact, speed up the mobilization of black voting strength, and opened the doors to the unprecedented growth in numbers of black elected officials (BEOs), these BEOs were catapulted into office as symbols of black civil rights coming-of-age. But, with rare exceptions, they brought nothing with them into political office that bore the least resemblance to black economic, political, and cultural program that meant much to anybody friend or foe, black or white, beyond the politically mundane business as usual stance of the liberal consensus. Following the Sixties, black politicians were suggestive of military leaders whose armies were forever in training (voter registration) but were never readied for participation in the field of battle for substantive goals worth fighting for.”

Think about these expressions as you prepare to vote.

Oct. 29, 2018

We Must Not Be Bystanders When Darkness Descends
By Jesse Jackson

NEWS ANALYSIS

Maurice Stallard

Vickie Lee Jones

Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67, were at a Kroger grocery store in Kentucky when Gregory Bush, a 51-year-old White man, shot and killed him inside the store and killed her in the parking lot. Witnesses say they saw Bush attempting to gain entry into a Black church but the door was locked.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - These are dark times. Thirteen pipe bombs were sent to two former presidents and other political and cultural leaders. In Kentucky, a White man shot and killed two elderly African-Americans at random in a Kroger grocery store, after failing to force his way into a Black church. In Pittsburgh, in what is believed to be the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue and massacred 11 during Sabbath services.

What time is it? In Isaiah, chapter 21, verse 11-12, the watchman in his tower is asked: “Watchman, what from the night?” The inquiry comes from an occupier and oppressor of the Israelites. The watchman replies: “The morning cometh, and also the night.” What time is it? Is it dusk moving toward midnight, or dawn moving to the day?

We are not bystanders in this drama. It will not be an act of nature that decides, nor a matter of fate. What is clear is that seeds of violence have been strewn across this country. Hatreds that lay fallow have been roused. Divisions have been sharpened. Rain comes from the top, never bottom up.

The president rouses fears of an invasion of an alien caravan coming this way. He invents the claim that terrorists have infiltrated the caravan. He lies that Democrats are to blame for not fixing our laws, although he torpedoed a bipartisan reform bill. He ignores the fact that these are people seeking asylum, who will gain entry only after their applications are reviewed and accepted.

His appeals to fear are echoed and augmented by allies for partisan purpose.Their cynicism is clear. “It doesn’t matter if it’s 100 percent accurate. This is the play,” an administration official told the Daily Beast. Furious, the murderer in Pittsburgh, who raged about a Jewish humanitarian group that helps resettle immigrants in America, arms himself with an assault rifle and three handguns and assaults the synagogue. The president says the answer is to arm synagogues and churches and schools.Sowing division is not an accident; it is a strategy.

President Barack Obama attacked as illegitimate with the lie about his birth certificate. Neo-Nazi rioters in Charlottesville, Va. — chanting “Jews will not replace us” — praised as including some “fine people.” The American media assailed as “the true enemy of the people,” the claim of “fake news” used to discredit reporting on the inventions and lies of the president. Political opponents slandered before mass audiences. What Teddy Roosevelt called the “bully pulpit” — meaning wonderful pulpit — taken over by a bully. What time is it?

The seeds of anger and hate are blowing in the wind. No wall, no boundary, no law can contain them. What we do know, as the Bible teaches, is that we will reap what we sow. In this darkness, are we moving toward midnight or towards the dawn? We can decide. The arc of the universe, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught, is long but it moves towards justice, but only if we bend it that way.

This is the test of leadership. It is now that leaders must appeal to the better angels of our nature. Itis now that leaders must bring us together and remind us of our common bonds. Clearly, as president, Trump has neither the intention nor the capacity to do that. He has profited from division and has no reason to change course.This is a time for others to lead, for citizens to act to bring us together.

Captive in Egypt, Israelis were asked to make brick without straw, a cruel impossibility. Under slavery and segregation, blacks were asked to embrace democracy without the vote, a cruel impossibility. Now, however, we can vote. We can speak. We can act. We can choose to build walls or to build bridges with our voices, our votes and our marching feet.Today we feel the darkness, the hard cold of hatred and division.

Will we be a thermometer and simply record this environment or act like a thermostat and alter these conditions? Will we choose to descend further toward midnight, or choose to force the dawn? Ultimately, we will decide, by what we do and what we choose not to do, by how we vote or whether we choose not to vote, by whether we come together or whether we allow our fears to drive us apart.Now is the time to act.

Oct. 30, 2018

Espy’s Path to the U.S. Senate Includes Black, White and 'Purple People' of Mississippi
By Khalil Abdullah

With a rock star-like following in Mississippi, Mike Espy must still fight for every vote to defeat two Republican candidates for the U. S. Senate.

Mike Espy campaigns for the U. S. Senate.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Mike Espy, the first African-American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi since Reconstruction, a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and now a practicing attorney, is running for a U.S. Senate seat against two Republican candidates in a special election. To win outright, a candidate needs 51 percent of the total vote or else the top two vote-getters will compete again in a run-off. In a conversation with Khalil Abdullah about his historic run, Espy reflects on his time at USDA and shares his vision of Mississippi’s future. In order to win, he says, he will need the state's Black, White and 'purple people' - those who will not necessarily vote along party lines, but in sync with his plans for the disadvantaged.

KA: Does Freedom Summer, 1964, still resonate in Mississippi in your upcoming election?

Espy: Yes. In fact, this past July [2017], I was in a mule train in Marks, Mississippi, and Robert Kennedy’s grandchildren were on the platform. It marked the 50^th anniversary of Robert Kennedy, Jr. coming to Marks, around the same period of the Freedom Summer. That period still resonates, not so much with Millennials, but with older people.

We revere Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers and certainly acknowledge and respect everything they did. We have to make sure Millennials understand who these individuals were and their contributions.

KA: Your take on the President’s posture on China and international trade as it affects African-American farmers?

Espy: I met with Black farmers in Leland, Mississippi, on this issue. I think the President’s tariff policy is short-sighted and misguided. When he imposed that 25 percent tariff on aluminum and steel, I believe he did it as a naked political outreach to voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. He did it, maybe not knowing or caring, of the retaliatory impact on soybean farmers. China slapped similar tariffs on soybeans, our number three cash crop, threatening the number one market [China] for Mississippi soybeans.

All farmers benefit from open markets and free trade. We don’t need to limit our global markets. Our farmers are so good, our yields so great, that we have to find extended markets to sell to. You can’t do that by inviting retaliatory tariffs that close markets

KA: Talk election math for the Senate seat. Do you need 100 percent of the African-American vote to win? How much of the Anglo vote?

Espy: I tell it a little differently. We need African-Americans to turn out at 37 percent of the total electorate, which is just about the Black voting age population here, and was the turnout percentage for Obama. If we get 95 percent of these voters, we’re going to look pretty good. Then all we need is less than one in four White votes.

In Mississippi, 15 percent of White voters are Democrats, so we need seven percent more, purple people, I call them. These are women who don’t necessarily like the President’s rhetoric and the chaos he’s causing. These are people who care about the closing of rural hospitals and continuing the coverage of pre-existing medical conditions. They want their children to graduate in Mississippi and not have go to Detroit or Atlanta for work. They don’t want their kids to have student debt. They know I will help them because I’ve helped them as a Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture.

We have enough purple people who will vote for me in order to win, if we get the Black vote out at strength.

KA: In Greenville years ago, elders were challenged by youth who asked, “Are you going to provide pathways for our job future and economic development other than casinos and prisons?”

ESPY: I hope to do that. I’ve heard the same thing about casinos and prisons -- that we need better opportunities. Here’s what I tell them.

Number one, I want you to graduate. Don’t drop out. I’m going to do all I can to help you graduate without debt. We need to make technical schools, junior and community colleges free of charge, at least for the first two years. They’ve done it New York and in the Los Angeles area. I don’t see why we can’t do it in Mississippi.

For other schools, we can find ways to mitigate some of that student debt. That’s number two.

Number three, we want these students to stay here. That takes somebody who is pro-business and attracts companies where Millennials want to work. I brought Deval Patrick to Mississippi. Here’s a brother who was governor of Massachusetts twice in a state that has Fortune 500s and Fortune 50 companies. I wanted them to see that this has been done before.

Massachusetts is not Mississippi. I know that. But there ought to be some collaboration and appreciation for best practices we can employ in Mississippi to bring jobs here, as long as we have the educated workforce. Of those reasons, none include prisons or casinos.

KA: Your take on technology, the demands for a changing labor force, and agriculture?

Espy: Those 30 Black farmers were already “there.” Some owned 6,000 acres, some owned two or three farms. They were telling me, they may be third generation farmers, but they’re often first generation to have graduated college. They spoke about new technologies they have employed that make farming easier. One said, when I was with my dad, I had to get in this tractor in the hot sun, but now, I get into a combine that’s air conditioned, and with hip-hop music. I plug in the coordinates, push a button, and that tractor drives itself. It picks the cotton, de-seeds the cotton, bales the cotton, all in one action. I can go from sunup until sundown, give it to my brother at nighttime because it’s using global positioning. We don’t need any sunlight to operate. All I have to do is afford it. It costs $250,000, and a lot of banks won’t lend because we don’t have the credit a lot of other farmers have established[K1] over generations.

We agreed we would focus on something called Catch-up, meaning for all the cost-share USDA imposes, they would get some benefit more than others, for a certain farm size, and if you were minority or disadvantaged. Agriculture has a great future, with technologies a lot of students don’t know about.

KA: Of the Department of Agriculture, it was said racism was so entrenched, it wouldn’t have mattered -- you or any African-American who brought a sensibility for fairness and equity would have been fighting uphill.

Espy: They called it the last plantation. I guess that was a plantation master’s view, but I felt that. When I came in, I tried to change the culture to make it more consumer and patron friendly. I reduced the size of it, but also reinforced a different mission. I elevated the food and nutrition mission, the conservation mission, and what they used to call food stamps I made friendlier for consumers.

More than anything, I elevated the rural development mission, to make sure every town in America with fewer than 50,000 people had access to water and sewer, and telephone and broadband, and everything the USDA offers them. I reformed the farmers’ side to make sure there was diversity and class satisfaction, regardless of race, and also highlighted things like rural development.

KA: Is it a valid criticism that you weren’t aggressive enough in uprooting that culture of racism?

Espy: Before I got to USDA, there were no Black farmers on any local county committee anywhere in America. There’s something like 4,200 counties in America and each county had a USDA presence. There were no Black farmers on these committees because members were elected by their peers. Those White farmers had never elected a Black guy nowhere in America prior to 1993. Nowhere.

Knowing that -- because I had studied it as a member of Congress -- I tried to eke reform into existence, but it didn’t work. The committee formula is created by the Farm Bill, a legislative device. Congress voted down the law I proposed, that there be an African-American farm representative that could vote in each of those counties where the African-American farm population constituted more than 20 percent.

I said, okay, let the Secretary of Agriculture choose a Black farmer to monitor these committees, because that’s where the farmers receive the loan approval, at these county committees. Congress voted that down.

Meanwhile, I found out there were no USDA civil rights agencies in existence because President Ronald Reagan had terminated them all. I made sure President Clinton understood that those civil rights offices should be reauthorized and he did that. That’s how the Pigford settlement for Black farmers came into being.

I created diversity panels at all of the agencies under USDA, whether they were forestry or nutrition, for example, to make sure those panels had people on them that looked like the consumers they served. So, I don’t know what those critics are talking about. That’s one of the reasons antagonists wanted me to leave, because I was reforming and doing too much.

KA: In the mid-1990s, a German associate said, “Our labor costs are too high and U.S. import tariffs make our vehicles less competitive. We’re going to make America our Third World. You have cheap land in the South and no labor unions.”

In years since, BMW, Nissan, Toyota have built plants in the South. Nissan just celebrated 15 years for one of its Mississippi plants. Your response to this foreign presence? And is there a labor movement emerging in Mississippi?

Espy: I certainly invite the next generation of global auto manufacturers to consider locating in Mississippi. Those are jobs we need; jobs for people we need trained. We need more of them – BMW plants and all that. We have a Mercedes’ plants right here in Mississippi. Those are jobs for our people and that’s what I would promote as Senator.

Where labor is concerned, I’m pro-business and also pro-labor. I don’t think there’s a contradiction. I’ve come out for a $15 minimum wage; that just ought to be the bottom line. I’m for collective bargaining. Workers ought to have the right to decide for themselves whether that plant should be unionized. So, I’m certainly for collective bargaining and against arbitration. Some plants in Mississippi are union and some aren’t. As long as the vote is taken, and if it’s an honest and fair vote - without manipulation by the companies – I’m willing to live with the results.

These plants are hi-tech, bringing opportunities for employees to be trained in jobs of the future. I’m all for them coming, as long as labor has an opportunity to organize without frustration or penalty.

KA: For those outside of Mississippi, what do you want them to know about your candidacy and state?

Espy: That we have more Black voters in Mississippi than anywhere else in the nation. We’re approaching a 40 percent African-American population and 35 percent of them are voters. I want the Black community outside of Mississippi to understand the dynamics in play here. If Black voters turn out, at strength, then all we need are White Democrats and purple people, who believe in the same thing as I do, that we need to lift the state by lifting those who are the most disadvantaged.

For those who want a slice of the American dream, irrespective of race, we want to make sure that opportunity exists. As Senator, I’ll provide that for them. If you focus on that American dream for those in that socio-economic class I’m targeting, that’s going to lift most African-Americans in Mississippi. That’s why everyone needs to focus on this race; make sure that we’re serious; make sure we can win. I’m going to lift everybody and I’m going to lift the Black community.

KA: If elected to the U.S. Senate, would you consider a 2020 run for President?

ESPY: No, and I promise you that. We’re focused on Mississippi.

 

 

Oct. 29, 2018

Millennials Remain Wildcard in Nov. 6 Midterm Elections
By Barrington M. Salmon

Eugene Craig, a millennial Republican, predicts, "There's a blue wave coming and a Black wave too." But, he said, both parties should fight for Black support.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Numbering more than 75 million, millennials in the United States are poised to surpass Baby Boomers to become America’s largest and most powerful group, analysts and experts say.

According to William H. Frey, a senior fellow with the Metropolitan Institute, millennials – people reaching young adulthood in the 21^st century - comprise 25 percent of the total U.S. population, 30 percent of voting age Americans, and almost two-fifths of the working-age population.

Political pundits say young voters might be propelled to the polls because of their opposition to Trump. Polls show that nearly 60 percent of 18-29 year olds disapprove of Trump’s handling of his job, the highest disapproval rate of any age group. However, despite those formidable numbers, it’s still unclear how many millennials will cast ballots because polls also show that young people aren’t overly enthused in politics or either political party.

The uncertainty surrounding millennial participation, in what many are calling the most consequential election in a generation, is unsettling to both the Democratic and Republican parties. But Democrats stand to gain more if millennials turnout, and if turnout in general, exceeds expectations.

Ras Plo Kwia Glebluwuo, 29, said he sees a good deal of disillusionment among his millennial peers.

“I think Millennials are just going about their lives. They’re just turned off about voting,” said Ras Plo, an educator and activist who lives in Washington, DC. “I have peers who are turned off. Those who don’t vote say the whole thing is dirty. They don’t want to legitimize the system. Generally, those who’re heavily involved are corporatists.”

Nathan Reuben, 28, said many millennials were shocked out of their apathy in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential elections, realizing that if they hoped to effect change they needed to get off the sidelines and become more involved in politics. Since then, his organization, Millennial Politics, through a website and the use of web streaming, social media, and livestreaming is reaching a swathe of millennials.

Reuben is using his multimedia platform to activate, engage and inspire millennials to participate in this country’s democracy. In 2016, he said, about 45 percent of eligible millennial voters cast a ballot. He agreed with Glebluwuo that cynicism and disenchantment with electoral politics played a role in the outcome. This time, he said, it has to be different.

“I’m hoping for a Blue Wave. I’m cautiously optimistic,” said Reuben, who is also a Democratic strategist and political commentator. “But we need to work for it, knocking on doors, making phone calls and doing the groundwork. We (the country) need to get back to the idea of solving problems. We’ve got to vote and vote in a larger voting bloc.”

There’s a great deal at stake.

If Democrats win one or both chambers, life for President Donald Trump may become more complicated. There will be greater oversight, hearings and investigations into controversial actions Trump has taken since Republicans in Congress have not used their ability to serve as a check and balance to the executive branch.

The Republican-led Congress has been implementing a domestic agenda that includes more than 60 attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act without being able to arrive at a viable alternative; refusing to grant any type of relief to young people overburdened with a staggering student loan debt of $1.5 trillion; and saddling future generations with a tax heist dressed up like tax reform, which - over the course of a decade - will transfer an estimated $5.7 trillion from the middle class to the extremely wealthy.

Millennials are also turned off by the hyper-partisan and toxic political environment and a president whose rhetoric is believed by many critics to have led to violence against racial minorities. Those incidents included those just last week when a Trump supporter was arrested and charged with mailing 11 pipe bombs to some of Trump’s most vocal critics; a White nationalist shot and killed two elderly African-Americans in Louisville, Kentucky; and a man spewing anti-Semitic comments shot and killed 11 worshipers at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Eugene Craig, a millennial conservative Republican, businessman and former vice chair of the Maryland Republican Party, echoed the sentiments of many about the importance of the millennials’ role in the mid-term elections.

“This election is absolutely important and will set the tone for the next decade. Those who emerge to hold power will decide redistricting, city and county councils, state and local governments,” said Craig, a Baltimore resident and Managing Partner at X- Factor Strategies LLC. “Millennials will be the most consequential for this and next two or three elections. Millennials represent the largest constituency, larger than Baby Boomers. There is a Blue Wave happening and a Black wave as well. Millennials are trying to send a message to Trump, a few messages.”

Craig said both parties have done a disservice to Black people with each acting as if Black people need to come to them, as opposed to politicos showing in word and deed what they have to offer and giving African-Americans a viable choice.

“I put it on party to make people fight for our support, give Black people a reason to support them,” Craig said.

Baltimore resident and political organizer, Dayvon Love, said the political environment is forcing millennials to reassess their relationships and alliances.

“We’re in an interesting moment where Donald Trump being president is forcing a conversation between Black and White millennials,” said Love, director of Public Policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle which is a grassroots think tank that advances the public policy interests of Black people. “Trump’s election has impacted relations. Blacks are angling to be more engaged…An important question is to what extent are Millennials going to stay engaged?”

Love has been a vocal advocate and organizer since 2010, including successfully standing up to the bail bonds industry in the fight for bail reform and leading efforts to pressure Maryland state officials to abandon plans to build a juvenile jail in East Baltimore for youth charged with adult crimes.

It’s important for Black people to use all vehicles available to them to devise and implement programs and build capacity as they create and sustain institutions, Love says. “I don’t believe in legitimizing the current system or seeing it as a panacea. But there are things we can do like accepting public dollars, changing how law enforcement operates in our community and restructuring education to make it responsive to community needs,” he said. “This requires some involvement in the political realm.”