[Sosfbay-discuss] Prop 77 and other funny questions.

[alexcathy at aol.com]

Dear Wes,

There you go again, Wes.

You seem to know far too much and this knowledge obscures the really 
significant facts.


-----Begin Original Message-----
From: Wes Rolley <wrolley at charter.net>
To: Green Discuss <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
Sent: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 10:49:03 -0700
Subject: [Sosfbay-discuss] Prop 77 and other funny questions.

If any of you have paid attention to the Proposition targeted negative
advertising (both side), there is one which stands so far out of the 
realm of
common sense that you know it might just work.  This is the Prop 77 
negative ad
that calls using a panel of 3 judges a "power grab" by the politicians 
who would
appoint them.  Right now, it is a power tool used by incumbent 
legislators to
stay in power.  The ad claims that the judges would not be "accountable 
to the
people" is if the current legislators are.

I have seen the Phil Angelides cartoon portrayal of Schwarzenegger that 
has been
making the rounds of progressive sites / blogs etc.  I wonder what the
Democratic reaction would be to an ad mocking a Hispanic or Oriental 
accent in
the way that this mocks Schwarzenegger's.  The Sac Bee called him on it 
and they
are right.  If Jay Leno wants to do it, fine. That is his business.

--
"I find I have a great lot to learn ? or unlearn. I seem to know far 
too much
and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am 
getting on."
-- Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Wesley C. Rolley
17211 Quail Court
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
(408)778-3024
http://www.refpub.com/
_______________________________________________

-----End Begin Original Message-----

Technically, the current legislators *ARE* accountable to the voters.  
However, in a one-party
Democratic County like Santa Clara most people, including me, will 
never vote for some jive-ass
Republican conservative.  The good people of California are waiting for 
the Green Party to
nominate and run good, progressive, non-Democrat candidates!

*  *  *

If past experience is any guide, most likely, the "Democratic reaction" 
to an ad mocking
a Hispanic or Oriental accent in this way would be no reaction at all, 
unless the target of the
mocking, i.e., Hispanics or Orientals themselves, protested.

What is the greater offense?  Mocking an accent or gerrymandering a 
district
to prevent the election of a "minority" to office?  Last December the 
San Jose Mercury News
ran a series on "Asian-Americans in Sillicon Valley" that included this 
about San Jose's
large Asian-American community:


". . . where redistricting wiped out a potentially Asian seat in the 
state assembly"
(San Jose Mercury News, December 12, 2004)


I happen to have the quote close at hand because I sent them a 
letter-to-the-editor on
this very subject yesterday, a letter which of course, they didn't 
print even though they
support Schwarzenegger's bullshit "reform."  This brazen violation of 
both the spirit and the
letter of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 generates no "outrage."

When Warner Bloomberg, to his credit, raised the issue in his own 
campaign as our
Green Party candidate for state assembly, it got no traction.  Unless 
the Asian-American
community protests bad things done to them (and for cultural reasons 
they almost never do),
nobody gives a damn.

It's like an Iron Law of Political Science.  Nobody gives a damn about 
civil rights unless the target
group protests.  Even then, invariably some people say "Oh! Why are 
they causing trouble by
protesting?"  It is only in the wake of the protest that we see 
something like your hypothetical
"Democratic reaction."

Frederick Douglas, the great African-American abolitionist said it 
best:


"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have the exact measure of the injustice and
wrong which will be imposed on them."


For increasingly irrelevant historical reasons (increasingly irrelevant 
because the heroes like
Rosa Parks are dying off), African-Americans like me actually have a 
cultural *tradition* of
bitchin' and protesting!  Good thing, too, because if everything was 
left to all of y'all
timid "middle-class" conformists, life in the U.S.A. would, sure 
enough, be both boring
and oppressive.


Alex Walker