August 28, 2010

“This is our day, and we ain’t giving it away,” Rev. Al Sharpton declared Saturday at a rally and march that his National Action Network sponsored in Washington. Also prominent were leaders of the NAACP, the National Urban League, labor unions, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Council of Negro Women, Martin Luther King III and many of the usual allies on these occasions.

I heard no oratory that came even close to that heard at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963 – 47 years ago, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., dissatisfied with the reception to his prepared speech, riffed the “I Have a Dream” portion for which he and the day are known.

Not far from Sharpton’s rally at the nation’s oldest public high school, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, or where the marchers ended up, at the site of the proposed King Memorial, the conservative, Tea Party, TV and radio huckster, Glen Beck, was making a fool of himself and, as I saw it, of the thousands who came to join him at the Lincoln Memorial to “restore” America. What they heard – if they listened – was a lot of hot air about God and love. As if his and Sarah Palin’s Christian followers (yes, she was a keynote speaker and, yes, they specifically made this a Christian event rather than an interfaith one) have a monopoly on that. Theirs was essentially an evangelical revival meeting without the communion sacrament and the passing of the collection baskets. “America today begins to turn back to God,” Beck declared. “God is not done with you yet, and He’s not done with man’s freedom yet.” In many ways his rambling, unfocused “sermon” at what also was clearly a politically-motivated power play, reminded me of Louis Farrakhan’s during the Million Man March – but Farrakhan did pass the collection baskets.

Before an overwhelmingly white gathering, blacks were featured as singers and prayer deliverers and – shamelessly – a niece of Dr. King gave her own “I have a Dream” speech, mixing her uncle’s cadences and various scriptural references. Alveda King, whom some apparently thought was King’s daughter, said: “I have a dream that one day soon God’s agape love will transcend skin color and economic status and cause us to turn from moral turpitude. I have a dream that America will repent of the sin of racism and return to honor. I have a dream that white privilege will become human privilege and that people of every ethnic blend will receive everyone as brothers and sisters in the love of God. I have a dream that America will pray and God will forgive us our sins and revive us our land. On that day we will all be able to lift every voice and sing of the love and honor that God desires for all his children.”

At his rally, Sharpton said of Beck’s gathering: “They may have the Mall, but we’ve got the message. They may have the platform, but we have the dream.” Actually Alveda King’s dream seems to differ mainly with that of Sharpton and others of the traditional civil rights coalition on abortion rights, gay marriage and prayer in schools. She’s against the first two; for the last.

While the Beckians were talking of taking back America, Tamika Mallory, the executive director of the National Action Network, was urging her audience to “take back our communities one by one.”

“We must not wait for others to do for us what we can absolutely do for ourselves,” she said. Tea Party supporters would not disagree with that.

In his last book, Dr. King asked: “Where do we go from here: chaos or community?” August 28, 2010, seems to answer: both. One group was “Restoring Honor”; the other’s aim was to “Reclaim the Dream.” Both groups were motivated to get off their butts and do something. But obviously, with leaders whose motives and messages can be questioned by people from all political spectrums, there is a great desire to build “community” – whether around God or a Tea Party movement or what’s left of the old civil rights coalition – but getting there without recognition of that fact is chaotic and probably doomed to failure.

Where Is The Silent Majority?

A growing minority of ignorant people are convinced that President Obama is a Muslim with a self-serving motive in supporting the right of Muslims to build a cultural center in downtown Manhattan not any closer to the “hallowed” World Trade Center site than strip clubs and at least two existing mosques. A lot of these pea-brains – many of them no doubt Tea Party supplicants – insist that he is not an American and should not be president. Of course, they mean that he is black and should not be president. Some unionized construction workers, who long have had a history of thwarting the attempts of blacks to join their ranks, are soliciting pledges from fellow workers to turn down any offers to work on the Islamic cultural center site.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been a strong defender of freedom of religion in this paroxysm of ethnic and religious bigotry and political demagoguery. In a speech on Governor's Island, within the hearing of the Statue of Liberty, he said earlier this month: "It is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our city even closer together, and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any way consistent with Islam. Muslims are as much a part of our city and our country as the people of any faith - and they are as welcome to worship in lower Manhattan as any other group."

This has become a national issue among the ill-informed, especially after President Obama stood up for the rights of all, including Muslims, to practice their religion and construct their institutions wherever they want so long as they follow local zoning laws.

Gov. David Paterson is trying to come up with some sort of Solomonic solution, but so far neither the proponents nor the opponents of the center are paying much attention.

Don’t be among the ignorati. Do your own research on this issue and contact your representatives in the City Council, in Albany and in Congress. And contact your own religious leaders to convince them to weigh in. This article from Salon.com might be a good starting point.

To Rangel Opponents: Who's Got Game?

A rather footloose Charles Rangel glowed in the best wishes of some 800 people, most of whom presumably paid the advertised ticket price of $250 to $2500 for his birthday at the famed Plaza Hotel. “He has fought for New York through thick and thin,” Sen. Charles Schumer told the throng of Rangel supporters. “We are so grateful and thankful for that.” And Andrew Cuomo, the state Attorney General who is the Democrats’ nominee for governor said: "His voice has always been a powerful voice for the forgotten people and the forgotten places of this nation. That's why we're here tonight to say Happy Birthday Congressman Charles Rangel."

The day before Rangel had offered an unexpected – and rambling – account of his side of the 13 ethics charges pending against him in the U. S. House of Representatives. He took to the floor of the House chamber for more than a half hour, against the wishes of his legal and political advisers, demanding an expedited trial so he can get on with his re-election bid. The New York primary is Sept. 14.

“This damn sure ain’t no funeral, is it?” Rangel commented as he looked out over the Plaza gathering. It was not. But if they have game, now is the time for his opponents to step it up. They should know this is going to take more than talk to depose Rangel when one of his buddies, the ever genteel (publicly at least ) former Mayor David Dinkins, gives the finger to a heckler as he enters the celebration.

Speaking candidly about race

Shirley Sherrod, God bless her, got into trouble because a lot of antsy people – from President Obama on down in his administration – don’t understand context. They don’t understand nuance. Well, there is a heck of a lot they do not understand, but let me stick with these two.

I believe I know Ms. Sherrod; but I do recall her husband, Charles, from my days as a law student doing anti-death penalty work in rural Georgia and then returning to the area as a national correspondent for The New York Times some years later. He was a founder of SNCC.

As a Columbia University law student assigned as a summer intern to work with the Atlanta-based Team Defense, I was part of a group of mostly Ivy League and mostly white Northerners sent to Dawson, Ga., to try to save the lives of five young black men that even a blind person could see were being railroaded with charges of murdering a white man in a rural general store. We filed all sorts of motions in preparation for hearings and then, if need be, trials. Because Jimmy Carter was president and was making a big deal about human rights, and because Dawson in Terrell County was one of the areas he represented as a state legislator and, arguably, as governor of Georgia, this story went, as would be said today, viral. Literally. Reporters from big news organizations across the U. S. and media from Europe came to look into this human rights abuse in 1977 United States.

Focusing our attentions beyond the hearings that would have to be had, we began researching the names on the list of potential jurors we had been able to obtain. One student and I met a man who had been recommended to us as someone who knew just about everybody in the area. He was a true Southerner; my student colleague was a true Northern fish out of water who just presumed that we had a typical redneck on our hands. But I engaged. I began to talk Southern – about the crops and such. My colleague thought I was nuts. But then came the good stuff.

Our “redneck” went over the list with us and gave us the 411. Then he told a story about learning how to treat black folks. As a boy growing up on a farm, many of his playmates were black kids on the farm. One day, feeling his oats, he called one of them “nigga.” His mama heard that and ordered him onto the porch where she blessed him out, telling him to never be disrespectful like that again. They were “nigras” not “niggas”.

Many people might not see the difference, but the fact that he did and could tell us who on that jury list was most likely to let racist views control the verdict, was what I respected. We would have had a damn good jury had not President Carter’s people pulled strings behind the scenes to assure that the case of the Dawson Five was settled in their favor before we had to go to trial.

Charles Rangel and House Ethics

Read for yourself what the 20-term Congressman has been charged with by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct after a case was recommended by Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Office of Congressional Ethics. It is hard to deny that some of this stuff he is accused of is the rather fishy side of politics -- as in, why did he do such a sloppy with paperwork or a good-old-boys-will-take-care-of-good-old-boys thing? As head of the House Ways and Means Committee, which, among other things, oversees taxes, why was he so bad at filing his own?

But, even holding one's nose, it is easy to say that under the rules of the game, a whole lot of legislators have done the same, or similar, things. The rules began to change when Speaker Pelosi came into office vowing to clean out the "swamp." It's primary occupants appear to be black members of the House. At last count seven of the 42 members were under some sort of investigation. As radio talk show host Santita Jackson asked earlier today: What is going on?

I am personally leaning towards the position that Rangel (D-New York) should step aside with dignity -- the President's position and that of some of Rangel's whippersnapper opponents in the September 14 Democratic primary in New York. But maybe he and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), who is also among those apparently under investigation, are on to something in declaring that they will fight it out no matter what it means ultimately for Democrats' continued control of the House. Maybe this does come down to the principle of the thing.

I've been writing about Rangel for The Root. This is the last piece I posted. There will be more. Let your voices be heard on this.

I've been on hiatus

But I'll have new postings starting later today.