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Black Political Discussion On 2016 Presidential Race

Posted on 2016-06-21

article-2599214-1CEAC0C300000578-878_634x419by: Bruce A. Dixon

2008’s black political discussion around presidential politics was all about silencing black noise over housing, jobs, unemployment, education, justice and peace. Be quiet we told each other. White folks will hear you and not vote for Obama. By 2012 we shut each other up to keep from embarrassing or the First Black President. Radical activists are now pushing for a wider black conversation about our people’s needs that includes socialism.

Remember the black presidential discussion in 2007 and 2008?

Barack Obama was the Democrat candidate, and practically all you could hear was:

  1. How black is this Obama dude anyway? Ain’t his mama white, his daddy African? What does that make him? Later on it became “How black are YOU if you don’t support Obama?”
  2. Got demands or just thoughts on issues like housing, foreclosures, low wages, no wages, black unemployment, mass incarceration or whatever? Swallow them. Siddown and shuddup before you scare white people out of voting for Obama. Keep quiet so he can get elected first.
  3. Got a hunger and thirst for peace and justice? Grow up and lower those expectations. And remember he’s running for president of everybody, not just black people so keep that peace and justice stuff in your back pocket till after the elections, or after he gets settled in or maybe for his second term if he gets one.
  4. He’s black so he obviously wants what you do, he just can’t say so out loud or he’ll scare the white folks. He’s can’t do nothin’ anyway if he don’t get elected.

There were also surrogates, who frequently lied outright to credulous black audiences, making explicit claims the candidate never wouled about rolling back mass incarceration, address black unemployment and a host of other issues if only we would keep the faith by shutting up and getting him elected first.

Some tech savvy young professionals I knew even organized a network that scooped up any short racist statement or outrage they could find online to make them viral, emailed, sent, forwarded and resent multiple times to every black person with an email address. The emails all had big headlines instructing recipients to send resend and forward the hot racist mess to every black colleague churchgoer, neighbor friend family member and friend they knew. Often these were accompanied with admonitions to register and vote. My email boxes and those of everybody I know were clogged for months with the stuff.

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Ben Carson – Republican Party Presidential Candidate – 2016

Posted on 2016-06-21

ben_carson 2Benjamin Solomon “Ben” Carson, Sr. (born September 18, 1951) is a retired American neurosurgeon and former candidate for President of the United States. Born in Detroit, Michigan, and a graduate of Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School, Carson has authored numerous books on his medical career and political stances, and was the subject of a television drama film in 2009.

He was the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland from 1984 until his retirement in 2013. Among his achievements as a surgeon were separating conjoined twins and developing a hemispherectomy technique for controlling seizures. Both achievements were recognized in 2008 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Workers World Party 2016 Presidential Candidate Monica Morehead

Posted on 2016-06-17

The following statement was provided by the candidate, who is responsible for its content.

Monica Moorehead, Workers World Party (WWP) 2016 Presidential Candidate.

Monica Moorehead

Sisters and Brothers, Comrades in Struggle:

We send warm greetings of solidarity to Peace and Freedom Party members.

The 2016 election year is momentous. We are faced with the racist, reactionary hatred of billionaire Donald Trump and all the Republican candidates who want to take this country back to an earlier stage of imperialism — before the Civil Rights, national liberation and workers’ struggles won major gains and before the women’s and LGBTQ movements.

One presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, describes himself as a democratic socialist. Who would have thought he would be giving the Democratic Party establishment a run for their money?

In the midst of all this stands the Black Lives Matter movement resisting unbridled police terror. This movement has forced police brutality, mass incarceration and gentrification front and center. This ongoing battle against white supremacy is a tremendous step forward for the working class, poor and oppressed — including the victims of racist state repression, notably by the police and ICE.

The movement for immigrant rights continues, as witnessed in Wisconsin on Feb. 18, when thousands held a Day without Latinos. The fight against environmental racism is strong in Flint, East L.A. and North Carolina. The fight for $15 and a union continues.

Capitalism is a system that must be uprooted if humanity and the planet are to survive however. This is why the Workers World Party campaign pushes for a movement to make fundamental change now and beyond the elections.

Most importantly, the current period calls for a strong stand against white supremacy. This is why we are running two Black candidates, Monica Moorehead for President and Lamont Lilly for Vice President.

Socialists must make the struggle against racism pivotal. The legacy of slavery is still integral to U.S. society, despite the historic election of the first Black president. The Black Lives Matter movement is carrying forth the ongoing struggle for Black Liberation, central to the victory for our entire class.

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Rev. Jesse Jackson Back in the Game with Hillary Clinton

Posted on 2016-06-12
Chicago 06/11/2016, 09:30pm
Lynn Sweet
@lynnsweet | email
WASHINGTON - APRIL 29: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) talks with Rev. Jesse Jackson at the funeral service for civil rights leader Dorothy Height at the Washington National Cathedral April 29, 2010 in Washington, DC. Height led the National Council of Negro Women and marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON – APRIL 29: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) talks with Rev. Jesse Jackson at the funeral service for civil rights leader Dorothy Height at the Washington National Cathedral April 29, 2010 in Washington, DC. Height led the National Council of Negro Women and marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — On March 13, a Sunday, after Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders wrapped up a Democratic town hall forum in Columbus, Ohio, she boarded a charter plane and headed to Chicago.

With the Illinois primary that Tuesday, Clinton had a heavy campaign schedule in Chicago the next day.

Among the passengers on the aircraft traveling from Ohio was Cleo Pendleton, the mother of Hadiya Pendleton, who was shot to death near the Kenwood home of President Barack Obama and his family.

There was also Geneva Reed-Veal, whose daughter, Naperville native Sandra Bland, was found hanged in her Texas jail cell after being pulled over for a traffic stop near Houston. Bland’s death threw a spotlight on racial inequalities in the U.S. criminal justice system.

The two mothers were part of Clinton’s “mothers of the movement” group, whose sad entry to membership was the tragic loss of a child.

And in another seat on the Clinton aircraft en route to O’Hare was the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.

Jackson has been an outcast during the Obama era. But with Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee, the civil rights leader is back in the game.

Jackson’s been close to Bill and Hillary for decades. It’s a complicated relationship that has endured despite its ups and downs, from Sister Souljah to welfare reform to tougher sentencing rules in the 1994 crime bill.

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