Y'all Don't Give Us A Reason To Vote FOR Conservafools

The more conservatives open their mouths, the more they prove just how politically savvy African Americans are, why we reject conservatism and why we vote at 90% clips for Democrats.

We've had this ongoing debate for years in the African-American community about whether or not we should be diversifying our political power and spreading it in both parties as opposed to the current situation of it being concentrated in the Democratic Party.  While in theory that's a sound strategy for us to have people involved in both parties, reality says otherwise.

There are 38.9 million of us making up 13% of the American population spread out across the country and concentrated in many high value electoral college states like California, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Florida and New York.  As Dr. King presciently foresaw, the Black vote is often the deciding vote in many elections

Since the 1956 election, in which we liked Ike just like everybody else in the country and President Dwight Eisenhower got 39% of the African American vote in his reelection bid and Vice President Richard Nixon got 32% of our votes four years later, the Republican share of the African-American vote cratered to just 6% in the LBJ landslide in 1964.

Since that election the GOP percentage of the African American vote has stayed below 15% except in 2004, when GW Bush surprisingly got 16% of the African American vote.       

And why has that share of the African American vote dropped to those levels?

The passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the appointment and confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court combined with a four decade long commitment since 1964 by the Democrats to passing civil rights legislation.  Democrats enacting or protecting policies favorable to our community, appointing Blacks to federal judgeships, ambassadorships, government posts and cabinet positions allowed us to compare and contrast the policies of liberal Democrats versus conservative Republicans.

Meanwhile we witnessed the Dixiecrats fleeing the Democratic Party for the Republicans with the corresponding ratcheted up engagement by the GOP in anti-Black policies.  The embrace of the 'Southern Strategy' and anti Black voter suppression tactics.  The rise of conservative pundits, politicians and Fox News who demonize the African American community ad nauseum.

We also noted the conservative trickle down economic policies implemented by the Reagan and George HW Bush administrations in the 80's-early 90's didn't help our community and only benefited the wealthy at our expense combined with their increasing far right wing anti-education, xenophobic and racist policies leading us to say thanks but no thanks to voting for them.

And when you have a Black* Supreme Court justice nominated by a conservative president who is the antithesis of the great Justice Thurgood Marshall and knee-grows in the Republican Party mouthing the same racist talking points and bigoted rhetoric that we hear coming out of the mouths of conservative white people, why should any proud, politically savvy Black person give up their precious vote for a party and a political philosophy that wants to oppress them?

Occupy Wall Street Needs To Occupy The Voting Booths As Well

Been keeping my eye on the Occupy Wall Street protests and the Occupy Houston protests that are occurring here.  While I have much love for the people participating in them and love the messages of fairness and social justice that are coming out of these protests that are spreading all around the world as I write this and striking fear in the hearts of the 1% and the GOP politicians that support them, I still have some reservations and concerns.

What I'm concerned about and why I haven't really gone all in with the Occupy Wall Street movement is because I'm not hearing enough language or ideas about what we do to channel this activism and anger of the 99 percenters at the jacked up status quo into reforming the political system to make it effectively work for the other 99% of the country.

For you folks who think the Occupy Wall Street protests are the bomb, these protests aren't going to mean jack if you don't follow them up with bumrushing the voting booths on Election Day next year and for the next ten to 20 years.

You can take your money out of the banks, make long eloquent speeches about corporate greed at the General Assemblies of the Occupy Wall Street  protest sites, sit in and get arrested, but unless you get your butts up on November 6, 2012  and every subsequent election day after that for the rest of your lives to throw the political bums out who aren't doing the job, the Republican politicians whose policies and conservafool philosophies enable the 1% to screw you, you don't run for public office yourself or support the candidates that would help create the political world you'd like to see, then this is just a colorful but colossal waste of time  

These direct action protests are a wonderful thing to witness and have been invaluable to jumpstarting a consciousness raising conversation about this Greed is Good culture we find ourselves in that isn't benefiting those of us not in the 1% end of the societal scale.  

But they need to be backed up with those same people that you got to turn out for these Occupy Wall Street protests to channel that enthusiasm and energy into consistently marching those same massive numbers of people to voting booths on Election Day and being permanently engaged and committed to the political action piece for the rest of their lives. 

Our enemies and the people they bamboozle into voting for them will damned sure be at the polling places in full effect, and we on the liberal-progressive side need to match their energy and exceed their turnout.   The 1% also likes it when they see voter turnout in the 40% or less range and hear people on the center left end of the political spectrum stupidly say they aren't going to vote.  Helps make it easier for them to keep the right wing politicians in office who screw you.  

But the more people who participate in the voting process, the more progressive candidates that get elected.  

Why do you think the Republicans have been engaged in voter suppression tactics against my community for decades and have been actively working to make it harder for low income people and students to vote?

You need all the tools in the civil rights toolbox to enact systemic change, and the most important one is the power of the ballot.

So as you plot your strategies in the various protest sites around the country and the world in the coming weeks and months, you may also wish to consider taking some voter registration cards with you as well or marching unregistered people to the county courthouse to get them registered to vote, and then follow up to ensure they do.

Not All Women Received The Right To Vote Today

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."   United States Constitution, 19th Amendment 

Today is the 91st anniversary of the August 1920 day that the 19th Amendment to the constitution for women's suffrage was ratified by a one vote 50-49 margin in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

With Tennessee becoming the 36th state to adopt it, the 19th Amendment became the law of the land and is rightfully celebrated as a human rights advance in the States. .

But I can't let this day pass by without reminding people that not all women got the right to vote today.  Despite the involvement of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman,  Ida B. Wells, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Frederick Douglass, Black women had to fight for inclusion in a suffrage movement in which white women were upset that the 1870 ratification of the 15th Amendment had given Black men (in theory) the right to vote before they received it.  

White suffragettes, especially those from the South sought to "win women's suffrage through demonstrating their allegiance to white supremacy."

Translation: they threw Black women under the bus to get their suffrage rights.   That came to a head with an 1894 clash in Great Britain between Ida B. Wells and Frances E. Willard. .  

Even when on paper African American women earned the right to vote on this date, Jim Crow segregation, disenfranchisement and all the heinous bag of tricks and violence used to suppress the rights of African Americans to vote would ensure that the power of African American women voters wouldn't be felt until after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Today the power of the African American women's vote has led to Black women getting elected to all levels of government including former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL) and a long list of distinguished former and current members of the House of Representatives.  Some of those Black women reps have provided major political leadership roles as well.

Rep.Shirley Chisholm in 1972 and Carol Moseley-Braun in 2004 made historic runs for president, and the votes of Black women are sought after by politicians seeking to build a winning electoral voting coalition    

And thanks to Black women voters, there's an African American POTUS and FLOTUS residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

So yes, today is a wonderful day to celebrate, but as with all things in America when it comes to African Americans and our long tortured history in this country, it's a bittersweet moment as well.