The Bernie Sanders campaign: Connecting with black voters is a work in progress.
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
After taking a look at the campaign staff and advisers for Hillary Clinton, looking specifically at people of color in major positions, I promised I would do the same for the Bernie Sanders campaign. As it stands to date, there is not a lot to report, but there has been some progress since his initial announcement. Based on examining his campaign staffing page, and searching to identify the people currently listed there, he needs to step up the hires of people who can assist him with networking in the all important segment of the base that votes for Democrats, specifically women of color, and black women in particular.
Vis-a-vis a Bakari Sellers (Clinton supporter) twitter exchange I found a new black female staffer, whose name is not yet on the Sanders campaign website—Donni Turner.
From her linked-in site, here's her bio.
Donni Turner, a Capitol Hill veteran, former White House intern and legislative strategist, advises the Secretary on departmental policy issues, coordinates statewide legislative initiatives, and develops programs consistent with departmental and administration priorities. As director of policy, Donni led Maryland’s implementation of the Veterans Full Employment Act which helps veterans receive expedited occupational and professional licenses. Donni successfully worked with the Joint Enforcement Task Force on Workplace Fraud and the General Assembly to amend the Maryland Workplace Fraud Act. Donni also led the Department’s legislative efforts related to the Maryland Foreclosure Task Force.
At the Podesta Group, Donni Turner provided expert counsel on a wide variety of issues, including homeland security, governmental affairs, education, and technology. Working with veterans’ service organizations, she was instrumental in ensuring that the Veterans Training Act and the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Improvements Act provided post-9/11 GI benefits to veterans participating in distance learning and certificate and diploma programs at career colleges.
Donni also served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Richard Durbin, the Assistant Majority Leader. She was responsible for the Senator’s fair housing legislation as well as homeland security and governmental affairs. Earlier, she was the Legislative Director for U.S. Representative David Scott. In that position, she was responsible for managing the Congressman’s legislative priorities, floor activity, and floor votes, coordinating legislative initiatives, and directing legislative staff and committee activities.
Donni began her career as a congressional staffer in the office of former U.S. Senator Max Cleland. She received two awards during her tenure with Senator Cleland: the Bill Johnstone Public Policy Award in 2002 and Employee of the Quarter for the Second Quarter of 2001.
She has strong roots in Atlanta GA, where she was
one of five sisters who graduated from HBCU Spelman College. Turner, is now
tweeting for Bernie.
I was able to identify one Latina, Susana Cervantes, who came into his campaign from her position in the draft Elizabeth Warren team.
(announced June 22, 2015) Western regional field director on the Run Warren Run campaign. Worked for the Nevada Democratic Party, Organizing for Action in Chicago and in 2012 as a field organizer for President Obama's re-election campaign in Las Vegas, and started as an organizer for the United Farm Workers in California.
With the exception of his speech to an enthusiastic crowd at La Raza, his mass events have attracted overwhelmingly white audiences, even in areas that have sizable minority populations. The good news is that the campaign is very aware of this, and on his upcoming schedule he will be making some venue shifts.
Supporters have raised the point that it is early yet, and he does not have the funding to make those hires. His key advisers, and spokespeople currently are all white males. Tad Devine is a very experienced political operative and has reported that Bernie's schedule is about to shift into places where he will be addressing black audiences, which is good to hear.
He has opportunities to connect more deeply with African-Americans in the days ahead. He is slated to speak Saturday at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Baton Rouge and at the end of the month he is set to address the National Urban League in Fort Lauderdale. A campaign aide said that Sanders will talk about race, touching on malnutrition in the inner city and youth unemployment among other topics in upcoming speeches. Last week Sanders, 73, spoke at the National Council of La Raza, where he touted his immigrant roots and vowed to push for a pathway to citizenship.
'Energize minorities'
And he recently tweeted: "We must energize minorities all across the country to engage in the Democratic process and thwart efforts to disenfranchise minority voters."
"It's important for him to make sure the core constituencies know who he is," said Tad Devine, a senior campaign adviser. "We have a story to tell about him and we are going to campaign actively in different communities."
Campaign trips to Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina are planned for August—all three states have significant black populations. Spotlighting Sanders' early activism will be key to connecting with African-American voters, Devine said.
I disagree with Devine on that last point. Repeating that Bernie attended the March on Washington. and his other early civil rights activities isn't sufficient. What needs to be done is to point out his voting record on issues of high interest to communities of color, and he will need to talk more comfortably about systemic racism, police violence, incarceration, voting rights, and defacto segregation in schools and housing. Pivoting rapidly to a discussion of jobs is not the answer to our concerns about racism in America. They will certainly help, but there are plenty people of color with jobs, who are oppressed daily (and who die) as a result of this nation's built-in structural racism.
Bernie Sanders needs more staff who can connect him with existing black voting networks. Black people gather in church, in barbershops and beauty parlors, and in powerful social, fraternal and sorority groups.
Will be looking forward to seeing how he is received at SCLC, and at the Urban League in Florida, where he will be part of a Candidates Plenary, Friday, July 31, 8:00 am - 10:00 am, which includes Democrats Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley, as well as Republicans Jeb Bush, and Ben Carson.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The impact a recently announced White House clean-energy initiative will have on low-income communities and communities of color, and what it would mean for the president’s legacy. The Root: Boom for Whom? Making Sure Blacks Aren’t Left in the Dark When It Comes to Solar Energy.
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Van Jones started Green for All, a national nongovernmental organization focused on building a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty, because he saw a simple demand and an easy solution to it. There were people in communities of color who needed jobs and, to Jones, the most important work to be done is to repower America with clean energy.
“I wanted to connect the people who most needed work with the work that most needed to be done,” the environmental advocate and civil rights activist tells The Root.
"It just came out of being in Oakland [,Calif.,] seeing the opportunity with solar companies and organic-food companies popping up all over the place and knowing that they needed workers and entrepreneurs to get that product out,” he says.
But then there came the downs, when the Senate refused to consider the American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009.
However, Jones now sees new reasons for hope. It seems that clean energy is making a comeback tour, especially since the Obama administration recently announced a new initiative to make solar energy accessible to all Americans, particularly those of low income. It’s another step in the administration’s mission to address climate change and promote clean energy while creating new jobs.
Green for All was one of the players that brought its influence to the White House, voicing concerns over the exclusion of people of color in the solar boom.
Van Jones, founder of Green for All, touches a solar panel to be used at one of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's solar-powered emergency stations during the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 Aug. 11, 2009, in Las Vegas.
ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
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Why Democratic candidates should take the Black Lives Matter Netroots fracas seriously, it illuminated an old liberal split—between mainly focusing on class and mainly focusing on race. Slate: More Than a Food Fight.
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If you were plotting a fissure point for liberals in the 2016 election, you might look to the divide between Hillary Clinton supporters and everyone to their left. But so far, that’s been a quiet divide. Clinton has refrained from attacks on her liberal critics, and the left-wing candidate in the race—Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders—has focused more on issues than the competition. In the meantime, a fissure has emerged that could have a profound influence on the shape and tenor of the primary. With a new protest movement against police brutality and a social democratic candidate for president emerging at the same moment, an old liberal split—between focusing on race and focusing on class—has moved back to the fore.
This was illustrated in dramatic fashion over the weekend at Netroots Nation—the annual gathering of liberal, lefties, and Internet activists. For most ordinary participants, Netroots is a safe space of ideological camaraderie. For politicians, not so much. In 2007, attendees jeered Clinton when she refused to join her opponents, Barack Obama and John Edwards, in a pledge to reject contributions from lobbyists. In 2009, a liberal blogger heckled Bill Clinton over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The next year, Harry Reid promised to repeal the measure after activist Dan Choi confronted him during a panel discussion. Anti-surveillance activists confronted Nancy Pelosi at 2013’s conference, and Vice President Joe Biden was interrupted by immigration activists at last year’s event.
Clinton skipped this year’s gathering in Phoenix—she hasn’t been to the event since her first, disastrous experience eight years ago. But her most visible primary opponents—Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley—made a trek to the conference. Again, the politicians in attendance stumbled and, in the process, brought the intraleft divide to the center of attention. Ironically, the struggles of O’Malley and Sanders offer an opening for Clinton on vital issues within the Democratic coalition.
This year’s disruption came from Black Lives Matter, the anti-racist movement sparked in the aftermath of Ferguson and fueled by the steady drip of police violence against black Americans. Midway through O’Malley’s remarks, demonstrators marched toward the stage, chanting names of black women killed by the police or who died in police custody.
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors addresses the crowd in front of Democratic presidential candidate, Gov. Martin O’Malley (far right), Tia Oso of the Arizona Black Alliance for Just Immigration and journalist/activist Juan Antonio Vargas. Phoenix, July 18, 2015
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After the year we've endured since Eric Garner's death, every candidate should have a plan. The New Republic: Structural Racism Needs to Be a Presidential Campaign Issue.
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This year, as with every other year, nearly every presidential candidate is white, with the only exceptions being long shots in the mushrooming Republican field. Most candidates are making at least rhetorical efforts to present themselves as allies in the increasingly amplified struggle for black liberation. Hillary Clinton has spoken forcefully of a universal voter registration plan, and her husband told the NAACP this week that the 1994 crime law he signed in his first term as president “made the problem worse,” jailing too many for too long. Rand Paul, an advocate of prison sentencing reform, has embraced Martin Luther King, Jr.’s frame of “two Americas.” Last month, Ben Carson, the only black candidate, published an op-ed after the Charleston church murders, writing, “Not everything is about race in this country. But when it is about race, then it just is.” On July 2, Rick Perry made a speech that is as close to an apology to black voters for ignoring them as a Republican may deliver this entire election season.
Republicans aren’t stopping there. They announced a “Committed to Community” initiative earlier this week, a partnership with black broadcasting giant Radio One to make a direct appeal to African American voters, who turned out at a higher percentage than white voters in 2012. They may very well be doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, but you’ll forgive me if I have my doubts that they suddenly realize, after generations of the “Southern Strategy,” that black voters matter.
I suspect it isn’t the party’s sudden rediscovery of a conscience that’s behind this. I think it’s this past year. Friday marks one year since NYPD police officer Daniel Pantaleo killed Eric Garner on a Staten Island sidewalk. The death of the 43-year-old father of six from a supposedly prohibited chokehold was captured on oft-played video, and his pleading— “I can’t breathe!” over and over, until he suffocated—became a mantra that energized a movement. #BlackLivesMatter dates back to the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012, but Garner’s death last July began a year in which Americans unaware of how fragile and frightening living a black life can be could no longer ignore reality. And it set a template for how we would come to digest all of the violence and injustices done in silent service of structural racism, which continues to survive as the deaths mount.
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Agreements signed by unelected dictators decades ago, can come back to haunt democratic countries as they try to develop. The Guardian: Radio ships and promises: Texas man disputes Haiti's plans for Tortuga port.
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In 1968, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier instructed his ambassador in Washington to pursue an acquisition: the Haitian dictator wanted a radio ship that could transmit propaganda across the Caribbean and to Latin America.
Don Pierson, a Cadillac dealer from Eastland, Texas, happened to have two such vessels, but both were moored across the Atlantic off the coast of south-east England. One, MV Galaxy, a former US minesweeper, had been the home of Radio London, the offshore pirate radio station which played an integral part of the 60s pop revolution.
A second ship, MV Laissez Faire, a former US navy supply ship equipped with two 50kv transmitters, had briefly broadcast the top 40 station Swinging Radio England.
Both were now lying idle in the Thames estuary, having been rendered useless the previous year by Harold Wilson’s government, which had criminalized the pirate stations with the Marine & Broadcasting Offences Act of 1967.
Pierson, who’d set up Radio London after reading in the Wall Street Journal that the Beatles were hardly being heard in their own country, began to actively seek buyers for his vessels.
The entrepreneurial Texan realised that radio ships could be especially useful to foreign governments, and thought he had found a buyer for the Laissez Faire when Papa Doc instructed ambassador Arthur Bonhomme to open negotiations.
“It seems laughable now but Papa Doc thought a radio ship might to help fix his PR problem,” the Texan entrepreneur’s son, Grey Pierson, told the Guardian. “Papa Doc is good! Tonton Macoute, they do not lie!”
In the event, the Haitians could not afford the Laissez Faire, but Bonhomme and Pierson struck up a friendship, and they agreed to look into other business ventures together.
Grey Pierson visiting Tortuga in 1972. He claims ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier granted his father a 99-year lease to develop a section of the island that is now to be developed by cruise-ship line Carnival. Photograph: Courtesy of Grey Pierson
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South Africans honored the 67 years of former president Nelson Mandela’s service to the country with 67 minutes of charity and community action around the country on his birthday Saturday. The Grio: South Africans celebrate International Nelson Mandela Day.
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Established in 2009, the day is meant to encourage South Africans to emulate Mandela’s humanitarian legacy and recognize the decades he spent fighting apartheid.
All over the country, volunteers handed out blankets and books, distributed toys at orphanages, and cleaned up public areas, before reporting their activities on social media.
His former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela held a lunch for elderly, needy women at the Mandela family restaurant near the family home in Soweto, calling it a chance to recommit to his values of “bettering the lives of our people.”
Dozens of elderly women wrapped in coats and scarves against the crisp winter weather filled a tent set up on the road.
“It makes me happy but it reminds me of the past, of the apartheid years,” said Elizabeth Khoba, 77, who had just received a fleecy purple blanket. She lived near the late statesman and remembered him “as a very tall chap” who would chide misbehaving children in the neighborhood.
Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, who once lived a few doors away from Mandela, described his fellow Nobel laureate’s work as “a lifetime of selflessness . an example of humanity for the ages.”
At the University of Johannesburg, Mandela’s widow Graca Machel gave out food parcels and blankets knitted specifically for the occasion.
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Local and international project in ‘city of 33 saints’ reconstructs 14 Sufi mausoleums smashed up by al-Qaida backed extremists. The Guardian: Timbuktu's historic tombs restored in show of confidence for war-ravaged Mali.
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Some of the ancient mausoleums of Timbuktu, shrines and tombs of Sufi saints which were a place of pilgrimage for centuries have been restored through a local and international project, three years after they were deliberately destroyed by armed groups linked to al-Qaida.
The director general of Unesco, Irina Bokova, visited the city in Northern Mali on Sunday, praising the reconstruction work as “an answer to all extremists whose echo can be heard well beyond the borders of Mali”.
The 16 tombs, the treasures of a place known as “the city of 333 saints”, some dating back to the 13th century, were believed by the local people to protect their city from danger. The saints were renowned for their scholarship as well as their piety, and their memorials formed part of the Timbuktu World Heritage Site, the Unesco list of the world’s most important monuments. In 2012, 14 were destroyed, leaving heaps of broken stone and mud, apparently a deliberate response by the militia days after Unesco placed the tombs on the “at risk” register.
The work has been carried out by local masons using traditional building techniques, collecting old photographs and surviving fragments of the walls as patterns to rebuild using the local stone mortared with banco, a mixture of clay and straw. The first monuments chosen for restoration were to three saints from different regions, one from Timbuktu, one from Algeria, and one from Djenné in the Niger delta.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
We are told now of psychological triggers, stimuli that manifests dissonant responses from prior negative experiences. The smell of magnolias on the day your father died might cause depression later in life on a fragrant, but hot summer day. The mere buzz of a Bee could conjure memories of the day your family was blown up by a drone at a wedding in Kabul, or the stumbled upon youtube routines of Don Rickles might just simply piss you off.
Now we are hearing cries about Heritage from those who deny the heritage of others. Now we are hearing demands to genuflect to those old Masters as if they were some Yoda set upon this planet to increase the lot of a simple and child-like population.
I have triggers when I hear of State's Rights and Local Control. I have triggers when I smell burning flesh and gasoline. I have triggers of air raid sirens and automatic weapons.
But I don't care. Let them. Let them revise their history and legend. Let them white wash their sins and let them play the victim in all of their pathological murders.
The Truth will always prevail. It just does.
Truth always prevails because when something like the smell of rope or the name of a place lights the neurons of Memory, Truth always wins.
States May Sing Their Songs of Praise
I imagine each enunciation, each syllable
pronounced—Mississippi—makes a noose
cinch somewhere, rope reduced
to arousal, tightening. The pull,
the hard-learned feel of vertebrae supple
within a neck's column, and marrow's juice
sucked clean until what remains are flutes
of bone, a wind section of rubble.
Whenever I meet Mississippi in a dream,
it is always a landfill of labored breaths
or a grand mammal crippled in morass.
What did you ever want of us? I ask. It beams,
The same you want for me—the subtle heft
of razors beneath the magnolia tongue's lash.
-- Kyle Dargan
"States May Sing Their Songs of Praise"
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