Protect our precious vote. Folks died for it.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47
We are all aware that the path to voting for black folks and other people of color in this country has been fraught with peril, ended in deaths, required a Voting Rights Act and has seen a takedown of grassroots efforts to get our people registered, like those undertaken by ACORN.
Attorney General Holder is sending Federal monitors to 18 states.
Justice Department to Monitor Polls in 18 States on Election Day
In the days leading up to and throughout Election Day, Civil Rights Division staff members will be available at a special toll-free number to receive complaints related to ballot access (1-800-253-3931) (TTY line 1-877-267-8971), including allegations of voter intimidation or coercion targeted at voters because of their race, color, national origin or religion.
On Election Day, federal observers will monitor polling place activities in 16 jurisdictions:
Autauga County , Ala.
Bethel , Alaska
Apache and Navajo Counties , Ariz.
Riverside County , Calif.
Randolph County , Ga.
Kane County , Ill.
Salem County (Penns Grove), N.J.
Cibola and Sandoval Counties , N.M.
Cuyahoga County , Ohio
Shannon County ; S.D.
Dallas , Fort Bend, Galveston and Williamson Counties, Texas.
Justice Department personnel will monitor the election in an additional 14 jurisdictions:
Maricopa County , Ariz.
Alameda County , Calif.
Seminole County , Fla.
Honolulu , Hawaii
Neshoba County , Miss.
Colfax County , Neb.
Passaic County , N.J.
Orange County , N.Y.
Lorain County , Ohio
Philadelphia , Pa.
Bennett and Todd Counties , S.D.
Shelby County , Tenn. ; and
Harris County, Texas.
Please make sure you have hotline numbers available if you see anything amiss at your polling place.
Here's a link to Election Protection
and the phone number 1 866 OUR VOTE (1 866 687-8683).
We have to be our own poll watchers.
Let's take a short trip into our history.
As a people we have always fought for the right to vote, the right to be accepted as fully human and have exercised the franchise whenever it became possible.
Black Americans vote for the first time in Charleston, S.C., during the presidential election, 1948. Though the 15th Amendment forbade barring blacks the vote since 1870, a variety of state laws had effectively disenfranchised many black voters.
The path to regaining our right to vote, repressed by poll taxes, tests, and outright violence has been fraught with peril, yet we persisted.
No one can ever forget people like Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party who for me will always be the symbol of why we must vote.
Our recently deceased brother Professor Ron Walters wrote in depth about this journey of our people in the political process in Freedom in Not Enough
Assessing black political power from the start of the civil rights era to the aftermath of the 2004 election, Walters (Black Presidential Politics in America) shows how the ongoing struggle for black voting power involves not just heroic individuals, but black-led committees and networks, some famous, some little known. Compared to the early 1960s, there are many more African-Americans in local office and in Congress, but black influence on presidential politics, Walters argues, comes only through "leverage"—when black primary candidates get enough power to bargain with the Democratic party and its nominee. The "new, bold and exciting" Jackson campaigns of 1984 (on which Walters worked) and 1988 did just that, in part because black churches supported them, in part because they felt like grassroots movements.
Once again the black church has been mobilized across America to get out the vote. Few media sources have paid any attention.
I did find this piece, from AP, and carried by NPR:
With Images Of Civil Rights, Blacks Urged To Vote
On the Sunday before Election Day, preachers told black churchgoers across the country to get out and vote — and defy predictions that they'll be complacent or uninterested in a year that President Barack Obama isn't on the ballot. Tying the vote to nostalgia and obligation, black pastors invoked the civil rights movement and Obama's historic 2008 victory. At Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta — the spiritual home of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock warned attendees that not voting would be nothing short of a sin. "Go to the polls Tuesday in the name of our ancestors," Warnock said to cheering listeners who rose to their feet. "Know that your ballot is a blood-stained ballot. This is a sacred obligation." Among those in the pews in black churches across the country were Democratic candidates hoping congregations would heed the message. Indeed, many pastors and worshippers said this election was more important than 2008, with Democrats struggling to hold on to large majorities in the House and Senate and Obama still working to put his agenda in place. Several voters said in interviews with The Associated Press that they planned to get to the polls, believing Obama needs more time to implement his plans.
The black electorate, one of the Democratic Party's most loyal constituencies, voted in record numbers to help elect the country's first African-American president two years ago, and Democrats are hoping at least some of that enthusiasm hasn't faded. Obama has in recent weeks tied a midterm vote for Democrats to continued support for his agenda — even as some candidates distance themselves from the president, who along with his policies has become less popular with the economy continuing to sputter. Polls indicate that minority voters may not turn out at the same level as they did two years ago, but analysts say a solid showing among blacks could still swing several House, Senate and gubernatorial races, especially in the South.
Mike Thurmond, currently Georgia's labor commissioner, currently lags behind popular GOP incumbent Sen. Johnny Isakson. Thurmond — hoping to become the first black senator elected in Georgia and the first elected in the South since Reconstruction— attended Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church in Atlanta as he made his campaign rounds Sunday. Thurmond said the polls are flat wrong. "This whole notion about a lack of enthusiasm was an illusion, and a propaganda scheme at worst, designed to depress turnout," he said. At the historic Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., the Rev. Michael Thurman opened his sermon Sunday by asking parishioners to vote. He said he did not endorse any candidates, but he said this election would be even more important than 2008's historic vote. "This one's going to decide the direction that the nation goes in from here," Thurman said.
Where I differ from the writer of this piece is that it is not about "nostalgia".
I am not nostalgic about racism - which is alive and well in this country. We are not "nostalgic" about the fact that we are fully aware that the right in this country wants to take us back to 1860. We hear very well thank you.
We know what the subliminal messages are all about as well as the blatant ones.
But where we are different than many of those who are now placing blame, and wringing hands about what the results will be when all the votes are counted, is that we will continue to be a bedrock. If somehow, this election does not get us where we need to go, we will be back again in 2012. With even more vigor. The black community in the US, with its numbers increasingly being re-enforced by Latinos, and young unbigoted whites is the future of the Democratic Party.
We've had many hard won victories in the past, paid for in blood, and we will carry on. We always do. Church folks would say that is our salvation. An abiding faith in justice and truth. We will not give up. We will not be defeated. We will carry on, like we always have - whether others are with us, or against us.
Whatever the outcome of today's elections, if there are set-backs, so be it.
We had setbacks during the entire period of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, which spanned many decades.
I am going out to vote to the sound of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions.
We're a winner
And never let anybody say
Boy, you can't make it
'Cause a feeble mind is in your way
No more tears do we cry
And we have finally dried our eyes
And we're movin' on up (movin' on up)
Lawd have mercy
We're movin' on up (movin' on up)
We're living proof in alls alert
That we're two from the good black earth
And we're a winner
And everybody knows it too
We'll just keep on pushin'
Like your leaders tell you to
At last that blessed day has come
And I don't care where you come from
We're all movin' on up (movin' on up)
Lawd have mercy
We're movin' on up (movin' on up)
So we will move up, move out to vote and yes - we will keep on pushin'.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos, Managing editor
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So much for post racial America Salon presents the "Best" Race-Baiting Ads Awards Salon: Presenting The Baitys
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Are you scared of gang-banging Mexican illegals? Islamic sleeper cell jihadists? Chinese people? Then this was the election cycle for you! From the primaries through the week before election day, America's been blanketed with race-baiting political campaign ads from insufficiently guarded border to shining sea. Today's the day when those countless hours spent by soulless political consultants poring over stock images of young Latino men looking for the shot that screams "about to kidnap your daughter" pays off. (Election day, historically, is also that day.) We're proud to present the first annual Salon Baity Awards for Excellence in the Field of Race-baiting.
(There will be no live ceremony, so we ask you to please just imagine that the winners in each category were introduced by an oddly mismatched couple of celebrities, like Katherine Heigl and Pau Gasol.)
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Example number 524987 that the Tea Party is full of racist elements. Colorlines: Ellison Responds as Tea Party Big Repeats Anti-Muslim Attack
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The founder of one of the country’s largest tea party groups* is on a quite roll, refusing yesterday to back down from earlier Islamophobic statements about Rep. Keith Ellison. In his stubbornness, Judson Phillips has cemented beyond any remaining doubt that the tea party is a movement grounded in the most base kind of racist politicking.
On Saturday, Phillips posted on his blog calling for voters to oust Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison in part because he’s a Muslim. In an email to his supporters yesterday Phillips, who leads the Nashville-based Tea Party Nation, wrote that Ellison’s religion was not itself reason enough to vote him out, but then went on to argue the opposite, writing that Ellison’s “beliefs define his character” and “[d]o we want someone who supports and defends the Constitution or someone who supports the imposition of a theocracy?”
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Voter intimidation. Talking Points Memo: Elderly Black Voters Allegedly Intimidated At Their Homes In Texas.
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Two middle-aged white Republican activists in Texas allegedly harassed and intimidated at least seven elderly African-American voters at their homes in eastern Texas, according to a complaint filed with the Justice Department on Thursday.
Gerry Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, submitted a report to DOJ alleging that two unidentified women visited elderly African-American voters at their homes in Bowie County and questioned them about their mail-in ballot applications, Mother Jones first reported.
The women allegedly showed up to 78-year-old Willard Wherry's home and asked him who had helped him fill in his mail-in ballot. "We are just trying to be sure no one is trying to coax someone to vote," one of the woman allegedly told Willard. Other individuals who were allegedly visited by the women were also listed on the complaint.
A GOP candidate for Bowie County Clerk, Natalie Nichols, also allegedly threatened a Bowie County elections official due to her concerns over mail-in ballot fraud.
Lacey Golden, the elections official, said in a statement that Nichols came into the office on Oct. 15 and asked if Golden had verified the signatures on the envelopes of mail-in ballots and grew aggressive.
"I feel she personally threatened me and severely invaded by personal space," Golden wrote. "She told me I was committing fraud by letting that happen, and she had called the [Secretary of State] about it already."
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The far right's obsession with the New Black Panther Party is part of a broader campaign to prevent the U.S. Justice Department from protecting minorities from discrimination. The Root: The Campaign to Destroy Civil Rights Enforcement
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The line moved by the administration of George W. Bush -- on torture, on civil liberties, even on what constitutes competence for a presidential candidate -- has had long-term and perhaps permanent effects on our political landscape. Case in point: that administration's takeover and dismantling of the finest civil rights law-enforcement organization in the country: the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ). As documented in the 2008 inspector general's report reviewing (pdf) hiring policies at the division, Bush administration apparatchiks worked to systematically undermine the integrity of hiring and, in some cases, the work of the Civil Rights Division.
Using crude and ugly political litmus tests for hiring, the leaders at the division set about dismantling what had been the long-standing excellence and relatively nonpolitical work of federal civil rights enforcement. Among the key culprits was then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bradley Schlozman, who was aided by senior counsel to the attorney general, Monica Goodling, in rigidly controlling what kinds of lawyers would be hired by the division.
Correspondence between Scholzman and Goodling reads like e-mails between the new leaders of some obnoxious high school club. Schlozman wanted to hire only "real Americans" -- not Democrats, or even attorneys who had actual experience in civil rights enforcement and litigation. Schlozman deemed (pdf) such candidates to be "Politburo members" or members of "psychopathic left-wing organizations designed to overthrow the government."
He also disfavored applicants from the nation's most highly regarded law schools. Instead, Schlozman wanted the Civil Rights Division to consider applicants with an "insurance" background and to consider more applicants from third-tier law schools. His accomplice, Goodling, also endorsed hiring only right-wing applicants, no matter how thin their résumés, so long as they were -- in her words -- "loyal Bushies." It was as though Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin were in charge of hiring at the nation's most powerful and important civil rights enforcement organization.
The Obama administration faced a daunting task in taking over the division. Morale among career attorneys was low. In fact, many career lawyers who had been with the division for decades -- including many hired during Republican administrations -- had left in disgust with the venal, political calculation that had taken hold of decision making in the division. The IG's report found that Schlozman had used "political and ideological affiliation in transferring and assigning cases to career attorneys" within the division. The core mission of the division -- to protect the civil rights of racial and language minorities -- had also been diminished in favor of a new focus on human trafficking and religious discrimination cases.
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As an avid nature lover I must say this is sadly true in many places in the United States. Ranger Johnson "As the only African American ranger in Yosemite National Park in California, I often lament that I'm more likely to meet visitors from Japan or France than I am to see an African-American family from nearby Sacramento or Oakland." CNN: National parks have room for all races.
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So I couldn't be more appreciative of my recent opportunity to lead Oprah Winfrey through this national treasure for a two-part television special that airs Friday and Monday.
Some readers may be stunned to learn that this well-traveled celebrity had never before visited a national park. Most people of color won't be.
When I was growing up in Detroit, Michigan, in the 1960s, no one in my family ever visited a national park, nor to my knowledge did anyone in my community. My school friends never talked about summer vacations to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. The Smokey Mountains and Mesa Verde never came up in class discussions.
I had my first experience with nature while my dad, who spent his career in the military, was stationed in Germany. Even now, I remember the cold air, the warmth of my parents' hands and the closeness of heaven as we walked one evening on a mountaintop in the Bavarian Alps. Something in those mountains reshaped my psyche.
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What proponents of a gay-blind approach to bullying in the Schools can Learn from Race Relations. Race Talk: See no race, see no gay.
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Pssst...... Refusing to acknowledge differences won’t make them go away.
Over the past few weeks, we have been inundated with stories of bullied and shamed young people taking their own lives due to the hostile environment of socially sanctioned hate.
Just this September three teens committed suicide after experiencing severe bullying: 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Indiana, 13-year old Asher Brown of Texas, and 13-year-old of California. All three teens were self-identified as, or perceived by their classmates to be, gay. Also in September Tyler Clementi, an 18-year - old freshman at Rutgers University, committed suicide after his roommate video taped him having an encounter with another boy and streamed the video over the internet to other students, and 19 - year - old Zach Harrington committed suicide after attending a homophobia - filled City Council meeting in Norman, Oklahoma, where his neighbors opposed the designation of October as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered History Month.
However, despite the recent media attention to this issue, the bullying of gay teens and the resulting high rates of suicide among them, have been major problems for years. This led Congresswoman Linda Sanchez (D-PA) and Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) to introduce the Safe Schools Improvement Act (SSIA), which would require schools receiving federal funding to implement policies to explicitly prohibit bullying on the basis of the “student’s actual or perceived race, color, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or religion”.
The SSIA received strong opposition from religious organizations who objected to the inclusion of sexual orientation as a protected target group. For example, the lobbying organization Focus on the Family argued that this bill would “open the door to teaching about homosexuality as early as kindergarten. And it would lay the foundation for codifying sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes,” which they oppose.
The opposition to the SSIA appears to be at least partially based on the premise that the SSIA should not include any protected categories, since such inclusion would discriminate against those who are not members of the protected classes. Essentially, they promoted limited mention of the factors that were the basis of the bullying. The notion that being color-, race-, gender-, or gay-blind would better combat the underlying causes of discrimination rather than explicitly calling out the root issue is highly reminiscent of the arguments presented by conservative organizations when opposing efforts to combat racial discrimination.
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The double edge sword of development. New York Times: Proposed Serengeti Highway Is Lined With Prospects and Fears.
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Every spring, out here on this endless sheet of yellow grass, two million wildebeest, zebras, gazelles and other grazers march north in search of greener pastures, with lions and hyenas stalking them and vultures circling above.
Maasai with goats along the dirt track. Conservationists fear that if the track becomes a highway, it will disrupt animal migrations and play havoc with the ecosystem. More Photos »
It is called the Great Migration, and it is widely considered one of the most spectacular assemblies of animal life on the planet.
But how much longer it will stay that way is another matter. Tanzania’s president, Jakaya Kikwete, plans to build a national highway straight through the Serengeti park, bisecting the migration route and possibly sending a thick stream of overloaded trucks and speeding buses through the traveling herds.
Scientists and conservation groups paint a grim picture of what could happen next: rare animals like rhinos getting knocked down as roadkill; fences going up; invasive seeds sticking to car tires and being spread throughout the park; the migration getting blocked and the entire ecosystem becoming irreversibly damaged.
“The Serengeti ecosystem is one of the wonders of the planet,” said Anne Pusey, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University. “It must be preserved.”
(Sven Torfinn for The New York Times)
Maasai women with donkeys on a dirt track in Tanzania that might be transformed into a highway cutting through Serengeti National Park. The highway could bring development, but also risks.
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I wish I had seen this story before. Clean the World Collects Bars of Hotel Soap, Cleans Them and Ships Them to Places like Haiti. CBS: A Little Soap Makes a Big Difference in Haiti
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Shawn Seipler used to be a high-powered e-commerce executive. Today, he's something even more powerful, reports CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook.
Now known as the pied piper of soap, Seipler seized on a simple idea two years ago - before the big quake, before the cholera epidemic: collecting all those little bars of hotel soap that get used just once, cleaning them with restaurant steamers, and shipping them off to places like Haiti where sanitary diseases kill millions of children every year.
"We're trying to clean the world and create a hygiene revolution," said Seipler, executive director of Clean the World. "We believe that in these developing countries that if we can bring the same kind of sanitation and health preventative maintenance of cleaning one's body the same way we do in the united states, we think we can change countries."
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Editor
On this Election Day, as we cast our votes in a declaration of independence and civic duty; as an affirmation of our heritage as Americans; I cannot help but consider that part of our Heritage that is like the crisp autumn leaves of dried blood on our hands; a heritage passed down by the spilled blood of brothers and sisters past; of the blood of grandfathers and grandmothers weeping from a round house; the blood of elk and bison spilled on sands and in forests; blood of eagles on a snow-capped precipice and blood of mallards on a Cascade valley lake; the blood of our Heritage carried by blood-vein rivers across this vast red earth. A heritage that preceded the landing at Plymouth Rock, even that of the landing of the Santa Maria. A heritage planted by a tribal people who also, nonetheless, in a vast and distant time, emigrated from the distant shores of another distant continent. Who, because of aeons of intimate connection with this landscape, believed that every thing is alive. So much so, that coastal tribes built their dugouts with hearts and lungs; because they believed the tree was still alive in the boat.
On this Election Day, as we make those important votes and then go about our daily routines, routines that take us along the corridors of pavement or through the static of the air; let us consider a once powerful people. A people subjegated, marginalized and weakened. A people caught between two worlds not of their choosing. A people left with only...
A Declaration, Not of Independence
Apparently I’m Mom’s immaculately-conceived
Irish-American son, because,
Social-Security time come,
my Cherokee dad could not prove he’d been born.
He could pay taxes, though,
financing troops, who’d conquered our land,
and could go to jail,
the time he had to shoot or die,
by a Caucasian attacker’s knife.
Eluding recreational killers’ calendar’s
enforcers, while hunting my family’s food,
I thought what the hunted think,
so that I ate, not only meat
but the days of wild animals fed by the days
of seeds, themselves eating earth’s
aeons of lives, fed by the sun,
rising and falling, as quail,
hurtling through sky,
fell, from gun-powder, come—
as the First Americans came—
from Asia.
Explosions in cannon,
I have an English name,
a German-Chilean-American wife
and could live a white life,
but, with this hand,
with which I write, I dug,
my sixteenth summer, a winter’s supply of yams out
of hard, battlefield clay,
dug for my father’s mother, who—
abandoned by her husband—raised,
alone, a mixed-blood family
and raised—her tongue spading air—
ancestors, a winter’s supply or more.
-- Ralph Salisbury
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The Front Porch is now Election Central. Grab a bite, and something to drink and then get back to GOTV!