<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'>Dear Friends,
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FOR THE RECORD: BRUCE A. DIXON SPEAKS FOR ME
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Peace and Love,
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Alex Walker<br>
L.A. Greens
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Posted on Black Agenda Report, October 3, 2012
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<a target="_blank" href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-black-man-watching-debates-and-voting-green">
Why This Black Man Is Watching the Debates, and Voting Green</a>
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By Bruce A. Dixon
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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<em>
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.
</em>
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Read Original Article: <a target="_blank" href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-black-man-watching-debates-and-voting-green">
http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-black-man-watching-debates-and-voting-green
</a>
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