[GPSCC-chat] Bruce Dixon: "Why This Black Man is Voting Green"
Spencer Graves
spencer.graves at prodsyse.com
Thu Oct 4 09:42:00 PDT 2012
Hi, Alex: Thanks for this. My sentiments, also. Spencer
On 10/4/2012 9:26 AM, alexcathy at aol.com wrote:
> Dear Friends,
>
> FOR THE RECORD: BRUCE A. DIXON SPEAKS FOR ME
>
> Peace and Love,
>
> Alex Walker
> L.A. Greens
>
> *Posted on Black Agenda Report, October 3, 2012
> Why This Black Man Is Watching the Debates, and Voting Green
> <http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-black-man-watching-debates-and-voting-green>
>
> By Bruce A. Dixon *
>
> I can't say I'm not mad at anybody. If being ripped off and lied
> to, and having murders committed in your name around the world
> don't make you mad, there's something wrong with you, and whatever
> is wrong with me, it's not that. I'll be watching tonight's
> presidential debates, but like most people, I already know what
> I'll do on November 6.
>
> I won't vote Republican, because among other things, the GOP is
> the permanent party of white supremacy. Republicans are also the
> permanent party of Wall Street, the party of Big Agriculture, the
> party of Big Insurance, Big Oil, Big Real Estate, Big Pharma, of
> more nukes Republicans are the party of privatizers, jailers,
> charter schools and military contractors. Republicans started the
> 40 years war on drugs, and of course they remain the party of
> Empire and Permanent War. Republicans hate brown people and
> threaten to jail and deport as many as they possibly can.
>
> Democrats on the other hand, are the permanent party of Wall
> Street. Democrats are the party of Big Agriculture, Big Insurance,
> Big Oil, Big Real Estate, Big Pharma and more nukes, more jails
> and continuing the 40 years war on drugs. Democrats are the party
> of more privatizations --- Corey Booker is trying to privatize the
> water in Newark New Jersey for instance.
>
> Democrats are the party of military contractors and charter
> schools as well. When Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ran
> the school system in Chicago he gave several high schools and even
> a middle school to the US military to run as their own charter
> schools. Obama's Race To The Top program bludgeons school
> districts around the country into closing public schools, firing
> teachers and replacing them with charters, and is lauded by
> Democrat big city mayors in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and
> Philadelphia.
>
> Unlike Republicans, Democrats often say they like brown people,
> and they get the lion's share of the Latino vote. But President
> Obama's words don't match his actions. Obama has deported more
> brown people in 3 years than the last three Republicans put together.
>
> On the good side, this Democratic president, and many other
> Democrats even support gay marriage and the right to access birth
> control and abortions. And although Democratic congressional
> leaders, when they controlled the House during and after Katrina,
> refused to hold hearings on the disaster because they were afraid
> of looking too pro-black, Democrats are emphatically NOT the party
> of white supremacy. In fact all the black elected officials
> elected with majorities of actual black votes are Democrats.
>
> So there are differences. But down here on the ground where people
> actually live, those differences don't amount to much. Both are
> war parties, parties of the rich, parties that want to privatize
> roads, water, public schools (that's what charters are about ---
> privatization!) parties that will continue the war on drugs and
> policies that feed our American prison state.
>
> I grew up believing my vote meant something, that it was my voice.
> The people I called my teachers taught me to raise my voice
> against unjust wars and economic oppression, the same way I'd
> raise it against racism. Exchanging a few white faces in city
> halls, legislatures and the White House for black and brown ones
> isn't really such a big deal.
>
> What passes for black political power nowadays isn't such a big
> deal to me because poverty rates are as high now as when a bygone
> Democratic president declared a war on poverty --- a project that
> failed because he spent all the money in a colonial war that
> killed millions in Vietnam, and climbing still higher. Prolonging
> the careers of black Democrats like Atlanta's Kasim Reed, Newark's
> Corey Booker, Philly's Mike Nutter or even of congressmen John
> Lewis and Jim Clyburn as they front for gentrifiers, charter
> schools, and power companies that build new nukes in the middle of
> poor black towns being poisoned by old ones is just not anything I
> want to do with my voice.
>
> I can see why all the big preachers want black folks to vote
> Democratic. Most of them are part of, or aspiring parts of the
> black political class, the black misleadership class themselves.
> Many depend on so-called "faith based" funding to keep their
> ministries alive. The black church has been captured, and is a
> kind of "state religion" of the black political class, divorced
> from the lives of the class of black people who provide over 40%
> of the nation's prisoners.
>
> I'm an old guy now, past sixty but not yet senior enough for
> Medicare, and I've been in the movement a long time. Younger
> people sometimes ask me what to do. After telling them not to
> respect their elders all that much --- we didn't respect them that
> much 45 years ago either --- the main thing I tell them is that
> movement leaders and participants back in the day had visions and
> horizons longer than the next election cycle or the one after
> that. They were prepared to fight whether they had allies in city
> hall, the legislature or the courts or not. Unlike today's NAACP
> and NAN, they developed agendas without the guidance of corporate
> funders and their recommended professionals.
>
> We've proved we can elect as many Democrats as we want, all the
> way up the food chain without changing much here at the bottom. I
> know this well. I gave more than 20 years of my own life to
> electing better Democrats, helping Democrats run better campaigns,
> and registering more Democrat voters. I met Barack Obama 20 years
> ago on one of those gigs in Project VOTE Illinois, where he was
> state director and I was one of three field organizers who signed
> up 130,000 new voters and flogged them out to the polls that year.
> We elected Harold Washington, and a lot of state legislators and a
> few Congressional reps. The Democratic party will still let you
> work for it, but once in office, big money calls the shots. It's
> time to leave that house and build a new one.
>
> It's an uncomfortable truth: the present US political system is
> largely people-proof and democracy-proof. The time and treasure
> we've sunk into supporting Democrats the last seventy years is
> gone. It's a horse we raised and watered and fed that somebody
> else has ridden off and it won't be back.
>
> I still believe my voice and my vote mean something. Kwame Toure
> used to say the thing to do is find an organization you're in
> substantial agreement with and join it, or if it does not exist,
> start one and recruit your neighbors.
>
> So I've joined the Georgia Green Party, and I'm recruiting those
> of my neighbors who still believes that unemployment and mass
> incarceration have to be addressed, that illegal wars and
> deportations must be stopped, that Wall Street must be reined in,
> and that gentrification and privatization have to be stopped. Most
> voters who call themselves Democrats, in fact millions of those
> voting for President Obama believe exactly these things already,
> but are substantially disinformed about what their elected
> officials actually DO.
>
> I was at a demonstration in support of Chicago teachers Saturday,
> and some participants seemed to assume that the president was on
> their side, that maybe they could enlist figures like Rev. Al
> Sharpton to aid their struggle to mobilize people against the
> inroads of school privatizaters. It fell to me to tell them the
> bad news --- that Sharpton took a half million dollar bribe years
> ago to jump on the charter school bandwagon, that he toured the
> country with Newt Gingrich and Arne Duncan beating the bushes for
> high stakes testing and charters, and the administration is
> actually the enemy on this one.
>
> Eventually they and many like them, if they want a party that
> stands up for what they believe, will have to become Greens. It's
> my job to make sure that happens.
>
> So I'll watch the debates, sure. The crooks who run them won't let
> Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate on the same stage with the
> corporate candidates. So I'll watch Democracy Now's coverage, in
> which Jill Stein and another candidate in real time answer the
> same questions as they do. My colleague Glen Ford will be a guest
> at Occupy The Debates in Baltimore as well.
>
> So yes, I'll watch. And I'll vote. But not for a Republican and
> not for a Democrat, not again. I'll vote like my voice means
> something. I won't be coerced into voting for a 100% evil Democrat
> just because the Republicans are 120% evil. I'm voting Green this
> year, and helping build a Green Party, right here in Georgia where
> I live.
>
>
>
> /Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, a state
> committee member of the GA Green Party, and a partner in a
> technology firm. He lives and works in Marietta GA. /
>
> Read Original Article:
> http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-black-man-watching-debates-and-voting-green
>
>
>
>
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--
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
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