POTUS and Eric Holder will be working together again
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver Velez
As the time draws near, when we will no longer have Barack Obama as our beloved POTUS, there has also been quite a bit of speculation about what he will do as a private citizen.
Just saw a short, but very interesting article on Politico:
Obama, Holder to lead post-Trump redistricting campaign. The former attorney general heads up a new Democratic effort to challenge the GOP's supremacy in state legislatures and the U.S. House.
As Democrats aim to capitalize on this year’s Republican turmoil and start building back their own decimated bench, former Attorney General Eric Holder will chair a new umbrella group focused on redistricting reform — with the aim of taking on the gerrymandering that’s left the party behind in statehouses and made winning a House majority far more difficult.
The new group, called the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, was developed in close consultation with the White House. President Barack Obama himself has now identified the group — which will coordinate campaign strategy, direct fundraising, organize ballot initiatives and put together legal challenges to state redistricting maps — as the main focus of his political activity once he leaves office.
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“American voters deserve fair maps that represent our diverse communities — and we need a coordinated strategy to make that happen,” Holder said. “This unprecedented new effort will ensure Democrats have a seat at the table to create fairer maps after 2020."
Obama strongly endorsed Holder’s selection, and is planning more involvement in state races this year. But it’s in his post-presidency that redistricting will be a priority for his fundraising and campaigning.
“Where he will be most politically engaged will be at the state legislative level, with an eye on redistricting after 2020,” said White House political director David Simas, who’s been briefing Obama on the group’s progress since it started coming together at the beginning of the summer.
While I was writing this, I saw that our DKos front page also had a piece on it.
This initiative was discussed last year, in Democrats Unveil a Plan to Fight Gerrymandering, but neither Obama or Holder were mentioned.
The Democratic Governors Association is creating a fund dedicated to winning races in states where governors have some control over congressional redistricting, the party’s first step in a long-range campaign to make control of the House more competitive.
Billed as “Unrig the Map,” the effort will target 18 of the 35 states in which governors play a role in redistricting, and where new congressional maps could allow Democrats to win House seats that are now drawn in a way to favor Republicans. The fund will be used for governors’ races over the next five years, leading up to the 2020 census.
Democratic officials said that they hoped to raise “tens of millions” for the effort and that they believed they could gain as many as 44 House seats if lines were more favorably redrawn in the 18 battleground states. Many of those states still have Republican-controlled legislatures, but with Democratic governors in place they could at least veto the next round of congressional maps and send the disputes to the courts.
Curious, since I hadn’t heard of this effort, I looked up Unrig the Map
The Map Is Rigged
In 2012, Democratic congressional candidates won 1.4 million more votes than Republicans – but Republicans easily won control of the House of Representatives. Why? Because Republican governors and state legislators implemented a state-by-state plan in 2010 to gerrymander legislative districts with hyper-partisan maps. It’s time to fight back – and one of the best ways to fight back is by electing Democratic governors in key states before the 2020 redistricting. The DGA’s 2020 redistricting project will work to win targeted gubernatorial races that are key to redistricting. By winning these races, we have an opportunity to transform the Congress and impact public policy across the country. It’s time to unrig the map. The DGA will be targeting Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
I have a strong feeling that with Holder at the helm, and with POTUS involved, the newly revitalized group will have a real impact, and will be able to raise the money they will need to make it happen.
I have been thinking about gerrymandering a lot, recently, and was surprised when I brought it up in class, my students didn’t know what it was. (sigh- another problem with no education in civics). I decided to see what I could find to pass on to them.
This WaPo piece is a really good informational read:
How racial gerrymandering deprives black people of political power
Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court expanded the meaning of one of the most important civil rights laws in U.S. history — the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Among other things, the court prohibited a then-common practice among some states of spreading minorities across voting districts, leaving them too few in number in any given district to elect their preferred candidates. The practice became known as "racial gerrymandering."
The court’s solution required that states create majority-minority districts — districts in which the majority of the voting-age population belonged to a single minority. With voting that occurred largely along racial lines, these districts allowed minority voters to elect their candidates of choice. But a fascinating development occurred in the years since. These districts, rather than giving African Americans more political power, might have actually started to deprive them of it. Majority-minority districts, by concentrating the minority vote in certain districts, have the unintended consequence of diluting their influence elsewhere. Experts say some Republican legislatures have capitalized on this new reality, redistricting in their political favor under the guise of majority-minority districts.
“Typically the goal in [packing minorities into a district] is not to reduce minority representation in the adjacent districts; it’s to reduce Democrats’ representation in those districts," said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. "They’ve been arguably using the racial demographics as a way to enact a Republican gerrymander.”
The Post article included this graphic:
What was even more fascinating was this video piece, which calls into question our entire system of “winner take all” elections.
Sorry there is no transcript available. Well worth watching and food for thought.
The Devil in Democracy - The Cause & Cure For Institutionalized Racism
Are you concerned about the Senate and their inordinate powers with respect to the confirmation of Supreme Court justices? Are you concerned about the explosive problems with race in the US? Then you've come to the right place. What if the cause for all gerrymandering and institutionalized racism is also a source for massive corruption and partisanship? More importantly what if all three problems can be fixed simply, perfectly and democratically? No quotas. No lines in the sand. Just equality. That is the focus of this video, which dives into a seemingly tiny compromise the Founding Fathers made in 1789 involving the most powerful special interest of the day - slavery.
"Proportional representation is the principle that a legislature should reflect all of the voters who elect them. Like-minded voters should be able to elect representatives in proportion to their number. In contrast, most elections in the United States are winner-take-all: instead of reflecting all voters, our legislators reflect only the biggest or strongest group of voters that elected them, leaving all others unrepresented. The use of winner-take-all voting methods in our elections for state legislatures and Congress is a central reason for major problems with our politics: gerrymandering, partisan gridlock, no-choice elections and distortions in fair representation all have roots in the inherent problems of winner-take-all methods." - FairVote
Multi-member districts (MMDs) are electoral districts that send two or more members to a legislative chamber. Ten U.S. states have at least one legislative chamber with MMDs - A multi-member electoral district (MMD) is an electoral district electing more than one representative to office. All proportional representation systems use MMDs, simply because it is impossible to distribute anything proportionally if there is only one seat. In proportional systems, the simple rule is that the larger the district size the more proportional the system. Other systems using MMDs are Block Vote, Party Block Vote, Mixed Member Proportional systems and Parallel systems.
Multi-member Super District Voting in the House of Representatives would eliminate gerrymandering entirely. By James D'Angelo EDIT May 21, 2016: Since I posted this video this problem becomes even more salient. This is because the US Senate is actually better equipped to serve minorities than most institutions on Earth. While the House has NO protections for minorities, the Senate has many (UCAs, filibuster, 60-40 splits, etc). These are powerful tools that dramatically serve minorities (of all types both political and racial). We also select a number of our presidents from the ranks of the Senate, so the lack of minority representation effects everything else as well (Presidency and the Supreme Court).
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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When methane started leaking out of a well at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility outside Los Angeles last October, noxious fumes blanketed the nearby Porter Ranch neighborhood for months. Residents complained of nausea, nosebleeds and vomiting; more than 8,000 families were forced out of their homes by the stench of the chemical odorant added to natural gas to help detect leaks.
Two thousand miles away, in a poor Alabama community, residents are complaining of similar symptoms after lightning struck equipment at an underground pipeline. An estimated 500 gallons of the same chemical spilled into the soil and groundwater, according to state environmental officials.
But, unlike in affluent, predominantly white Porter Ranch, residents in Eight Mile have been largely ignored, stuck for eight years with the stifling rotten egg stench that still hovers over the low-income, mostly African American enclave just north of the Gulf of Mexico.
Residents say there have been no relocations to hotels or rented homes. No transfers to schools out of harm’s way. No U.S. Cabinet members swooping in to investigate. No national media hordes.
“Because we don’t have the financial wherewithal to put pressure on these people, they simply turn their heads,” said Eight Mile resident Carletta Davis, one of hundreds of people suing Mobile Gas Service Corp. over the leak of the chemical mercaptan. “Our children are sick.... It’s absolutely an outrage.”
The two leaks have another thing in common: San Diego-based Sempra Energy owns and operates Aliso Canyon and, for most of the eight years since the lightning strike, it also owned the Eight Mile facility.
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Since the enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Black churches have always played a pivotal role in the electoral process. During the Civil Rights Movement, Sunday morning pulpits were preachers’ soapboxes to commingle God’s word with inspiration and information regarding civil rights initiatives, including rights and privileges guaranteed by that law.
In response to the civil rights political victories, African-Americans exercised their right to vote with passion. Within months of the act’s passage, one quarter of a million new Black voters had been registered. By 1969, Tennessee had a 92.1% turnout; Arkansas, 77.9%; and Texas, 73.1%.
The enthusiasm with which African-Americans vote has diminished over decades. It remains the Black church’s responsibility to encourage its membership to participate in the electoral process; remind them of their history; and empower them to be heard through their vote.
Black voter turnout, or the lack thereof, will have a significant impact on the election of the next president of The United States of America. This presidential campaign season, many Black evangelicals find ourselves in a bit of a quandary. I am a Pentecostal pastor who is a pro-life, registered Democrat. Thus, I am biblically and doctrinally opposed to policies that support same-sex marriage and abortion. But simultaneously, I support policies that empower the middle-class, poor, uneducated, disadvantaged, and effectively improve the civic, economic, religious, and cultural conditions of our African-American communities. An agreement or disagreement on one issue cannot dictate one’s vote. We must look to the totality of the candidates’ platforms to make an informed voting decision.
As the Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), a 6 million member denomination, and the Pastor of West Angeles Church of God in Christ, a 25,000 member congregation in the inner-city of Los Angeles, I take seriously my obligation as an American citizen to vote, despite the complexity of choice we sometimes face. To that end, my vote must be cast for the candidate who cares most about my community, my family, the Black church, its rights and our parishioners.
There are many pastors formally endorsing presidential candidates this campaign season, to much fanfare. It is an insult to the intelligence and savvy of the Black church membership for political candidates, strategists and pollers to assume that for whomever a “church leader” cast his or her vote, the membership will follow blindly. Moreover, legally and constitutionally, the church should not exert influence over the outcome of elections and individuals involved in elections. In fact, a 1954 Tax Reform Act, commonly termed the “Johnson Amendment” noted that all tax-exempt organizations are banned from supporting or opposing political candidates.
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“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places - SAD,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!” he tweeted Monday.
None of this is true. The United States presidential election is more akin to 50 separate state elections (and the District of Columbia), organized by 50 separate sets of state officials, with a variety of different rules and processes. And on the ground level, these elections are run by thousands of different people of every possible political affiliation. The process of electing a president is too decentralized and fragmented for anyone to “rig” it at the ballot box in any systematic way.
As for “voter fraud,” the evidence is clear. Setting aside the fact that the election hasn’t happened yet, the “in-person” fraud that Trump alludes to—where someone impersonates another voter to cast multiple ballots—happens so infrequently as to be essentially nonexistent. Out of 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014, according to the most comprehensive investigation of voter fraud, there were just 31 instances of possible impersonation. Other forms of fraudulent voting are similarly rare.
There is no basis for Trump’s claim. But that doesn’t mean it won’t stick. Already, according to the latest poll from Politico and Morning Consult, 41 percent of registered voters believe that the election could be stolen from the GOP presidential nominee. When respondents were broken down by party lines, 73 percent of Republicans said they feared a rigged election, compared with just 17 percent of Democrats. This outcome is a function of two facts. The first is partisanship—voters tend to agree with their chosen candidates. And that is tied to the second: the conduct and rhetoric of the Republican Party over the past decade.
In the eight years since Barack Obama won the presidency, GOP lawmakers across the country have embarked on an aggressive campaign for new voter restrictions, all bolstered by false stories and insinuations of voter fraud. Minor problems—the occasional duplicate registration or misidentified voter that comes with running an election system—are turned into lurid stories of election year malfeasance, which then justify harsh new laws for voter identification and voter access. Justifying their sweeping and restrictive voting law, North Carolina Republicans pointed to an alleged 35,000 cases of fraudulent voting in the 2012 election, based on a report from the state’s board of elections. “These findings should put to rest ill-informed claims that problems don’t exist and help restore the integrity of our elections process,” wrote then–North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis in a statement.
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If the group were still around, this Saturday, October 15, would mark the Black Panther Party's 50th birthday. The historical influence of the Panthers, perhaps best known for their early militant posture toward police violence, has been apparent recently in pop culture. In February, Beyonce rolled out a Panther-themed performance at that most all-American of events, the Super Bowl halftime show. A week later, the documentary Black Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution introduced the group to a new generation of Americans. But the Panthers' active legacy is undeniable, too. Many leaders from the Black Lives Matter movement cite the Panthers' influence on the work they do around police violence.
Ericka Huggins, who founded the Panther's New Haven, Connecticut chapter, and later stood trial alongside Panther chairman Bobby Seale for their alleged roles in the killing of a New Haven member suspected of working with the FBI. Both were acquitted, though Huggins spent two years in prison before the case went to trial. I asked Huggins—who at 66 years old remains a social justice activist—to reflect on the Panthers' legacy.
Mother Jones: How would you say today's Black Lives Matter movement draws on the Panthers' influence?
Ericka Huggins: Everything draws on the things that came before. The Black Panther Party drew on the civil rights movement. All of the organizations in the '60s and '70s and '80s—the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, the Black Berets, the American Indian Movement, the Gay Liberation Front, the anti-war movement—drew on movements before them. In particular, the courage of the women in these movements is a legacy that the Movement for Black Lives draws on. I stand on their shoulders, and Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi [the founders of the Black Lives Matter national network and creators of the hashtag], stand on theirs as well. The term Black Lives Matter is new. But there isn't anything new about what is being requested of black people, of people of color, of white people. There is work that all of us must do, and because of social media we are more aware of it. That is the impact of Black Lives Matter. I'm particularly inspired that the people leading the movement are women—LGBT women.
MJ: Would you say today's movement is more progressive on that measure than the Black Panther Party used to be?
EH: That's a loaded question. I don't know that I could say the Black Panther Party is more progressive, for instance, than Fredrick Douglass. Or that Martin Luther King was more progressive than Malcolm X. Or that Malcolm X is more progressive than Marcus Garvey. A movement brings together all kinds of peoples with differing perspectives, but the same goal. If you compare the Ten Point Program of the Black Panther Party to the platform of the Movement for Black Lives, you'll see similar language. It isn't that anybody copied the language. Anyone who has an open heart can see the violence of, for instance, the police today, the so-called correctional system today. Anyone with compassion will come to the same conclusion—that it has to stop. And the it that has to stop is racialized thinking, racist behavior, violent means to control people. Our response to that violence is sourced in love. So I don't know about more progressive—everything has its purpose in its time.
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Sheena Wagstaff, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary art department, was relatively new on the job in 2013 when Pamela J. Joyner, a prolific art collector and supporter of artists of African descent, invited her on a trip to Washington to visit the studio of the Color Field painter Sam Gilliam. They looked at Mr. Gilliam’s in-progress pieces, a series of striking works with a thin stream of paint poured on board.
Ms. Wagstaff knew the Met owned a Gilliam work, “Leah’s Renoir” (1979), somewhere in its collection, and the visit “prompted me to take a second look at it.” Later, Ms. Joyner donated money to buy another Gilliam,“Whirlirama” (1970), and next year there are plans to exhibit both when the Met reinstalls its modern collection. “Pamela is such an informed champion of her artists,” Ms. Wagstaff said.
That trip to Washington was one of the many ways that Ms. Joyner, 58, exerts her power as an art-world influence behind the scenes. She has relinquished a successful business career to become what she calls a full-time “mission-driven” collector of a very specific niche: Abstract art by African-Americans and members of the global African diaspora. Now she leverages her relationships with the Met in New York, the Tate in London, the Art Institute in Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to help these artists gain traction in the wider world.
“It’s no less ambitious than an effort to reframe art history,” said Ms. Joyner, who sees herself as righting a wrong. “First, to include more broadly those who have been overlooked — and, for those with visibility, to steward and contextualize those careers.”
When art collectors publish a book on their treasures, they often include a glamour shot of themselves surrounded by myriad works. But in “Four Generations: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art,” edited by Courtney J. Martin and published last month by Gregory R. Miller, there is no picture of Ms. Joyner anywhere. Instead, there are academic essays by curators and writers, with only a short “question and answer” segment with Ms. Joyner and her husband, Alfred J. Giuffrida.
“That’s very deliberate,” Ms. Joyner said recently over coffee in Chelsea. “The focus is on the artists.”
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Voices and Soul
by
Justice Putnam Black Kos Poetry Editor
It is the parade of indolent progress. It is a parade of influence marching across islands and continents, a flotilla churning across oily-foamed seas and jet-set through nitrogen-acid skies. It is a procession of killers and victims stumbling across the black pavement at the corner of Main Street and International Blvd. It is a march of wardens ordering leg-irons and yokes to weigh down the hopes of our better angels, while assuring a cheap labor force for the Captains of Industry as they guide the Ships of State in a firing line outside the Bay of Sugar and Blood.
Miss America pontificates from a platform behind the curtain on the NSA, It's A Small World Hay Ride Monster Truck.
The Oligarchs and the Generals ride in a bubble-top convertible, supplied by medical companies saving dollars and commonsense selling diluted milk powder and super-charged bacterial water to the victims of earthquakes, hurricanes and famine.
It is a Great Mall of America, full of convenience store display cases filled with sacred artifacts of extinct peoples next to knock-off Plantation Kitsch mobile home park lawn art.
It is the parade of indolent progress, it is a parade of influence marching across islands and continents and the broken backs of both the proud and the forgotten.
On the way home, Klansmen handed out pamphlets on the corner.
At the convenience store, taxidermied alligator heads framed red red lips, black black skin, white wild white wide eyes, and teeth grinning (gritting).
Mammy, Sambo, savages and jockeys shaped cookie jars, figurines, gravy boats, piggy banks, and salt and pepper shakers.
I hold evidence in the shape of entrails, two scales stuck to the side of the sink. Bodies
decapitated and soaked in milk and butter. Breaded in crumbs. Tender, the results of freeing the little ones. Mount that big one there.
I have lived with the reduction of noise and the number of warnings. I have lived under July’s blankets and February’s ill-fitting sleeves.
I have lived with the proof of the Susquehanna’s existence, in the shadow of the shadow of the outline of a bubble’s refracted edge.
-- Tina Boyer Brown
"I Have Waited for the Siren"
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY’S PORCH