Black activists renew calls to break from Dems
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: Funny Stuff

Black activists, with encouraging words from Louis Farrakhan and some encouragement from Jesse Jackson are renewing calls to break with the Democratic party and start a third party. The loss of so large and loyal a segment of the Dem base would be a huge blow to an already declining institution.

Blacks urged to form independent political movement

WASHINGTON - Growing disappointment with the Democratic Party, capped by a so-called Senate compromise last week that paved the way for the confirmation of at least three Right-wing judges, has prompted some activists to consider leaving the Democratic Party and forming an independent political movement.

"Everybody knows that Blacks are the most loyal folk to the Democratic Party. We have been loyal. And what do we get for our loyalty?" asks Mary Frances Berry, former chair of the U. S. Commission of Civil Rights. "African-Americans should form an independent political movement; not a party, but a movement and say, 'This is what our issues are and any candidate who supports these issues we will support. And if you don't support them, we won't support you.'"

Over the past 30 years, Democrats have received more than 80 percent of the Black vote in every presidential election.

"When it comes to Black people, African-American people, Afro-American people - whatever we're calling ourselves this year, Negro, colored - there is no party, except the White party," says Thomas N. Todd a Chicago attorney and longtime civil rights activist.

"When White people decide they want their own best interest involved, whether they are Democrats or Republican, they vote their own interests and Black people have got to start doing the same thing. We've been putting party politics ahead of the self-interest of Black people."

The fact that Todd and Berry, neither of whom has been linked to what are considered fringe political movements, are ready to bolt the Democratic Party could spell serious trouble for Democrats.

Others activists may come to the same conclusion after 14 Democratic Senators signed on to a deal that paved the way for the confirmation of at least three far-Right judges. Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen was subsequently confirmed for the 5th Circuit with a vote of 56 to 43.

Under the agreement, former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, nominated to the 11th Circuit, and California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rodgers Brown, nominated for the D. C. Circuit, will be voted on and are likely to be confirmed.

Democrats said they went along with a compromise in order to avoid the, "nuclear option," the Republicans' threat to abolish the option to filibuster, a maneuver employed by the party out of power to stop a particular measure from reaching a floor vote. Under Senate rules, it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, known as cloture. Republicans had vowed to change senate rules to end filibusters with a 51-vote majority if Democrats did not agree to allow the vote on at least three of the nominees.

Even Democrats who were not a part of the negotiated deal, but who voted to move ahead with the Owens vote are being strongly criticized by activists.

"People like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the rest are just behaving like mainstream Democrats," says Berry.

Obama, the only African-American senator, broke with his Congressional Black Caucus colleagues to support a floor vote on Owen. He then voted against her nomination.

"It just strikes me that anger at the Democrats, when they mounted this fight, led this fight, held fast for two or three months and then finally just came up short because we couldn't persuade any Republicans to hold off on the nuclear option, just seems to me to be directing anger at the wrong place," Obama says. "I think the Democrats in the Senate did everything that they could to prevent these nominations from coming up. But we only have 45 seats."

Even so, some other Democratic stalwarts in the Senate, Barbara Boxer (Calif.), John Kerry (Mass.) and Edward Kennedy (Mass.) voted against the last-minute compromise, knowing Republicans had enough votes to confirm any nomination once it reached the Senate floor.

"After the Democratic leadership pleaded for years to get strong support against these judges and then to capitulate, and then have Owen approved, it was nothing short of a sell out," says Harvard University law professor Charles Ogletree. "We cannot afford to be puppets or capitulate like we're mannequins. That's one of the consequences of allowing this extraordinary self-destructive conduct by the quote, 'leadership.'"

Todd says an independent movement in the Black community should start from the bottom up rather than by elected officials who are already tied to the two major parties.

"I think that Blacks in the local community ought to start organizing," he says. "An independent movement at the grassroots level, at the bottom and not even expect it to be done from the top down." Ogletree agrees.

"We don't have an opportunity to waste another four years looking for a messiah to come from some other place. The talent is right within our grasp. We need to nudge the self-assured, incredibly accomplished young leaders."

Rainbow/PUSH Coalition founder and President Jesse Jackson Sr., a two-time candidate for president on the Democratic ticket, acknowledges that African-Americans are getting shafted by Democrats.

"They protected the minority in the Senate; not the minorities outside the Senate," Jackson says. "They did not fight to protect minorities from judges who are anti-civil rights, anti-labor, anti-consumer.Our interests are not being protected in this arrangement." However, Jackson stopped short of calling for Blacks to leave the Democratic Party.

But Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam argues that African-Americans are not being respected by either Democrats or Republicans and hinted that he might launch an independent candidacy for president in 2008.

In a panel discussion before the National Conference of Black Mayors last month, Farrakhan said, "If we leverage our strength, we'll make both parties bow and you'll get what you've been looking for all the time that you've been serving the party."

Independent Black political movements have been tried before.

The largest such movement was the formation of the National Black Political Assembly in 1972, which grew out of a movement led in part by playwright and poet Amiri Baraka. It drew 10,000 African-Americans to Gary, Ind.

The group culminated in 1980 with a National Black Political Convention in Philadelphia with the intent to start an independent Black political party. But, the group became divided when a faction wanted to exclude electoral politics from the charter, recalls University of Maryland Political Scientist Ron Walters.

Subsequently, many members went there separate ways, with many ending up helping Jesse Jackson 1984 presidential campaign.

"We really need our own center of gravity and we don't have it," Walters says. "And because the Black Caucus is not building it for us, we're sort of tied at the ankles, the hips and the shoulders with dysfunctional politics."

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean does not want African-Americans to leave the party.

"First of all, Democrats are never going to nominate judges like this. Second of all, hopefully the Democratic Party is going to be willing to fight," Deans says.

Some Blacks see Democrats fighting -against them.

Just before the last election, African-American get-out-the-vote groups, including the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation, which includes 84 organizations, were angered when White-led, liberal organizations, called 527s (so named for the section of the Internal Revenue Service that governs their activities), spent approximately $100 million to turn out the Black vote, bypassing traditional Black groups that had been effective in the past.

Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Mel Watt (D-N.C.) is cautious about any movement that loses sight of the real enemies of Black people.

"I'm in favor of a movement, but part of that movement would be to hold them accountable on these two judges and not only to hold Democrats accountable, but to start to communicate to Republicans that there has been a strong history in the area of civil rights of bi-partisanship and that we don't want to turn the clock back. I'm not sure that I believe that this is the time to spend all of our efforts fighting with each other."

Professor Ogletree predicts there will be political repercussions. He says, "I think this will be an example of when we will not stand back and accept this. There will be a cost to pay."

Chicago Defender ~ Hazel Trice Edney ** Blacks urged to form independent political movement