Yuri Kochiyama was an important activist that has been almost forgotten. Much like the women who supported Dr. King, she has been virtually erased from history.
However, she is an icon. The iconic image of Malcolm X after he was shot, she was the woman cradling his head. Though erased from the Spike Lee film, she was a student of Malcolm X and was a part of the Black Panthers movement.
She was also a radical. She stirred up controversy by saying Osama Bin Laden was a hero. If you listen to her entire argument, she makes an intriguing point that I wrestle with. I agree with parts of her argument and it is an indictment of all Americans in our complicity of the horrors done in our name. It’s a point we should all wrestle with.
She passed away in 2014.
I have been reading “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein and I am struck by the lessons not learned by the Democratic party. In 1966 Ronald Reagan ran for Governor of California. Pat Brown, the father of California governor and 1992 Clinton rival Jerry Brown, was an accomplished liberal technocrat. Calling him “progressive” would be generous, but he was a New Deal technocrat, meaning he had great domestic programs but he wasn’t willing to work for the social progress needed to complement those programs.
A problem Obama had when he was in office, too.
It’s a form of hubris that has been in the Democratic party for over 50 years.
Pat Brown didn’t ignore the Watts riot, he actually learned some valuable lessons from that but purposely didn’t take credit for opening that theater in Watts. In fact he distanced himself from the Civil Rights issues, seeding everything to Reagan.
He allowed Reagan to frame the conversation and even ran ads just quoting Reagan.
He lost and allowed a Fascist to win and eventually become President of the United States.
People often look back at the 60s as some kind of virtuous time. Everything was magical, happy, and perfect. People who lived it see it as the greatest moment in history, black people became free, we saw the birth of the woman’s movement, and John Lennon was a magical British elf who ended the war with flowers and staying in bed.
What we should look back and see is that the leaders of that time failed to protect future generations, black people gained equal rights but did not overcome racism, the woman’s movement was used to disrupt solidarity by the CIA and birthed what ended up as what’s called White Feminism™, and John Lennon was an abusive heroin addict who did nothing to end the war.
It was a time of turmoil, it was a time where the “Greatest Generation” (I hate that name) failed because they forgot the populist ways of Franklin Roosevelt and “Fightin’ Bob” LaFollette and became technocrats going through the motions. Yes, they did it because it was the right thing to do, but they never went on the road to excite people with their ideas. Those who came of age forgot the lessons of the loss of Pat Brown and Hubert Humphrey. We must know our history and we must constantly learn from it. Was there an election that Pat Brown could have learned from? Maybe Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign? (I don’t know. I need to read Rick Perlstein’s first book on Barry Goldwater.) We can’t always judge the past when the players are long gone. However, we can point out how history can teach us about past elections.
Tom Perez on tour with Bernie Sanders is still using the Clinton/Brown play book. Instead of talking about big ideas, Perez is talking about Donald Trump. This leads me to two conclusions about things, 1) He stands for nothing so he offers no ideas and 2) The Democrats are going to lose in 2018 because they are not focusing on big ideas.
One parallel of 1966 is Brown spoke in nuanced terms and never talked about what he’s done and what vision he has for the future. Nuance is fine when debating but not when it comes to stump speeches. Stump speeches should be black and white: This is how I see America, this is what I will do for you, this is why I’m better than the other guy and contrast that with your vision of America. Do that until you’re sick of hearing it or you win, what ever happens last.
Until the Democratic party figures out this simple formula, a formula that has worked throughout history, they will lose and the Republicans will win. Until then I can’t talk with people who don’t have that perspective. I’ll just point them in the direction of where I got my information. As Yuri Kochiyama said, “Political philosophy is not just something you obtain, it’s something that you develop through your lifetime. And of course, as different events happen to you and different people you meet and writings that you read, your philosophy is going to change.”
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