This is How You Facilitate Party Discipline

When pledging to go against the party nominee, even after you have agreed to support them, you should lose your credential to attend the National Convention. That's what happened to Debra Bartoshevich, a National Democratic Committee delegate, who publicly vowed that she would vote for John McCain, over the Democratic Party's nominee, Barack Obama.

Looks like the Wisconsin Democratic Party is going to make ole girl pay for her rebellion:

A Democratic National Convention delegate pledged to Hillary Rodham Clinton says she hopes to fight off an attempt by Wisconsin Democrats to take away her credentials because of her past statement that she would vote for John McCain if Clinton wasn't the nominee.

Well, you really don't help your cause in keeping your national credential when you engage is acts like this:

Wisconsin Democratic party chairman Joe Wineke said Friday he's confident Bartoshevich won't be at the national convention. Wineke said it's clear Bartoshevich violated party rules by failing to honor a pledge of intent to vote for the party's presidential ticket in the fall.

Wineke added that Bartoshevich would not have been chosen to be a delegate if people had known beforehand that she would vote for McCain if Obama were nominated.

Bartoshevich told the newspaper she felt Clinton was being treated unfairly and she questioned Obama's experience. She also said she had signed up with "Citizens for McCain," encouraged by her sister, who has served in Iraq and backs the Republican.

This is how you facilitate party discipline - you let renegades know that there will be consequences and repercussions for pulling stunts like this.

If only Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi could do likewise, we'd have the Democratic Party we've always wanted.

BLACK BLOGGERS DON'T WANT SCRAPS

(CROSS-POSTED AT Jack and Jill Politics)



WE GET IT; YOU WERE THERE. CAN WE DRIVE NOW?

We demand a seat at the table. If you're going to discuss us, why don't you invite us to the discussion first?

And it isn't a fight we asked for. Most of us just wanted to be heard. But when we learned how to use this tool, the INTERNET, as a means of not just communication, but for political activism, organizing protests and marches - making demands of the MSM that our issues get media coverage fairly and objectively, it was only a matter of time before we get called into full-scale battle.

I just never thought the first ambush would come from the Vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement. I thought being in the blogsphere would better assist the old guard in the fight, and ensure them they could trust us to keep fighting the good fight against racism, sexism, all-isms, as well as bring attention to issues within our communities that matter to US, BLACK PEOPLE.

So, when I read that Jesse Jackson states that we bloggers are "good at serving the meal, but don't know how to farm and till the soil", I wanted to scream "If you take your hand off the plow and let us drive the mule, maybe we learn how to do that, too!"

And they wonder why we who are under 50 or original Black Panthers are challenging them. I don't care if the NAACP trots out a 35-year-old activist named Ben Jealous; now that I've read that piece in the Chicago Tribune, in addition to what I wrote here, I'm now convinced that the NAACP has sent in someone to infiltrate the blogsphere and immobilize US. All we're trying to do is advance the damned movement, and once again, we're being shown, through the outdated strategies of the Old Guard why we're still stuck like Chuck in the things that matter.

The Tribune article gives props to Black Bloggers for getting the word out on a lot of issues that flew under the radar:

Shaquanda Cotton - I first saw this at Skeptical Brotha and he didn't let up until other blogs picked up the shameful imprisonment of a 13-year old girl that her teacher didn't handle properly.

Genarlow Wilson and Marcus Dixon - imprisonment for giving into hormones.

Jena 6 - mass demonstration organized and had the proper impact to pressure the law into their release; as well as expose good-old fashioned bigotry. I think more than 20,000 Negroes invaded Jena, Louisiana, but the MSM can never admit to more than 25,000 Negroes doing anything in coordinated fashion - that scares the shyt out of them.

Pressuring Democratic Candidates to drop out of the Presidential Debate sponsored by Fox Network (I refuse to call it a news organization). Color of Change.org started that petition and it caught fire to the point John Edwards was the first candidate to drop out; Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton followed in rapid succession. With the three marquee names saying they weren't showing up, Fox had no choice but to drop the debate. Far worse was that the debate was organized by the Congressional Black Caucus.

Now, as a result of those successes, and others on the way, the Old Guard is whining that we're not respecting them. That we're saying they're irrelevant. I don't think I've read where we said we didn't need them anymore; I think we are urging them to rest on their laurels and show us how to carry the mantle of Civil Rights, political activism and demands for seats at the table of political and social civil discourse on a grander scale. We've never asked them to go away.

Ever see two people driving a car; I mean with both of their hands on the steering wheel? It cannot be done - that's why cars are built with ONE steering wheel and a passenger seat. Someone has to drive and others have to ride. I believe we've asked for permission to learn how to drive the car now, and just like old deacons, deaconess, old Pastors in church, they want to hang on until they physically die and kill the movement right along with them. They won't allow us to learn how to drive the car, and then they get upset when we take the keys and teach our damned selves how to put the car in gear and speed off.

They all holler about how they marched with Martin Luther King; but I wonder if they actually caught the man's VISION? I also wonder how many of them really stood with Dr. King, as opposed to kicking him out of their pulpits? Because not all Black preachers were on board with Dr. King; I'm willing to put on my tinfoil hat and propose that if we got a look at the FBI's payroll, some of them would be listed as paid informants. But, I digress.

Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles, a revered Memphis Pastor who was with Dr. King the night before his assassination, told me at a conference in DC four years ago, that Dr. King worried about the fact that he hadn't really trained anyone in the movement to carry forward the strategies of civil rights and political activism. He feared that all he'd done was to integrate Negroes into a "burning house". Dr. King instinctively knew that civil rights activism had to go further than being able to ride public transportation anytime or anywhere we wanted; go to schools wherever we wanted. In 1968, our issues turned on the economic scale. Rev. Kyles gets many speaking invitations where he rivets you with total recollection of Dr. King's last night; the cadence, the atmosphere - to hear him tell it is like re-living those moments; so I think he would know how Dr. King felt about what would happen after he left the scene.

In 2008, forty years after Dr. King's death, I think I'm comfortable in saying he had every reason to worry, considering the recent Civil Rights track records of whom he left behind to carry on his work - and the Congressional Black Caucus in particular.

The Old Guard is still waging the fight for scraps from the table when the reality is, we want a seat at that table. Forget scraps.

And yet, when we see them, or the Congressional Black Caucus in the current state, they continue to engage in fights for SCRAPS.

Getting Don Imus fired was SCRAPS. Getting Fox Network's FCC license yanked to stop them from spewing racist vitriol is MEAT ON THE BONE.

Getting a job on Wall Street, now, is SCRAPS. Being someone like Dick Parsons or Stan O'Neal, running thangs, is MEAT.

Old fashioned Civil Rights Marches in Demonstration and Protest, combined with advanced technology by means of the Internet is MEAT. Whining because Clint Eastwood made a historical picture without any Black People in it because it wouldn't be historically accurate because they weren't there at Iwo Jima, is SCRAPS. If they were there, you think a perfectionist like Eastwood didn't do his homework in making that pic? If brothas helped to lift that flag, they would have been in the picture, and not some unnamed Black soldiers either. Honestly, Spike needs to pick his battles better.

We've had scraps - we want a seat AT THE TABLE. We want the same things we thought the Old Guard wanted. Maybe we should challenge them as to what they really want versus what WE really want. Maybe because we're going about it differently, they may be scared we're going to leave them out. We're not; we will happily take them with us if they stop picking fights and battles with us and trust us to get the job done.

Now That Obama Has Closed the Deal...

(cross-posted at JackandJillPolitics.com)

As being reported by the AP, my colleague, Jack Turner, has rightly pointed out, it's time to get down to business.

In the short time I've blogged here, I've read numerous comments about housecleaning in the Congressional Black Caucus. I recently posted about the CBC Monitor Report card, and we can always use some volunteers to track bills. More on that later.

The fire is hot, and it's time to strike. Now that the "inevitable" Democratic nominee is being told to take a hike as I write this, she's implying she'll concede if Obama puts her on the ticket.

As another colleague, Rikyrah, would say, "Hell to the NAW!"

I agree. She hasn't buck danced enough apologies to start the healing process yet.

At this moment, we have a bunch of CBC Hanky Heads that are scrambling for cover, because they are hearing loudly from their districts; many of them that went overwhelmingly for Obama, while they were toting Missy Clinton's water. However, merely fielding challengers to the incumbents because they supported Clinton defeats the entire Democratic process, such as it is. There are other reasons for challenging them. In case you're not aware, allow me to list a couple:

Iraq War Funding

Refusal to Filibuster bills that had no business passing

Bankruptcy Bill

Internet Neutrality

Campaign Finance Reform Laws that would make funding of National Campaigns Public Financed only and kicks out Lobbyists and Corporations (they refused to cosign on a bill introduced by Obama himself)

Hate Crime Study Bill (now you know such a bill is to reintroduce COINTELPRO)

Slinging a fellow member (Cynthia McKinney) under the bus for protesting about being molested by the Capitol Hill police, while providing a crooked member (Dollar, Dollar Bill Jefferson, y'all) total cover.

Colluding with Fox Network to Host a Presidential Debate.

There isn't enough room on this blog to list them all. But at least 25-40% of the Caucus voted on those atrocious bills; many of them with districts that could ill afford to have those bills pass.

Rep. Mel Watt once shouted at me that the CBC Monitor should have been looking at the Caucus' voting records on Civil Rights issues, like Ebony, Black Enterprise and Essence Magazines do. When I reminded him that the job of the Congressional Black Caucus wasn't just to vote on Civil Rights legislation (usually getting a damned Post Office named after a Black Luminary - face it, since the passage of MLK's birthday into a National Holiday, the caucus hasn't done much), he called me a damned blogger and one of my colleagues at CBC Monitor walked up to see why the Congressman was yelling at me before deciding whether or not to get in that arse.

We started CBC Monitor with the precise intention of putting a spotlight on why the Caucus was being infested and infected with DLC tendencies. When you examined the voting records, you found clear evidence that at least 30% of the Caucus was taking two and few payola from Corporate interests, and it wasn't even Tom DeLay-type cheddar, either.

The CBC sells out on the cheap, and leave the few remaining warriors hanging in the wind. That is what has to stop.

Donna Edwards has already done it. Al Wynn is gone, and being the ingrate he is, he's forcing the state of Maryland to pay for a special election that will give Ms. Edwards the seat earlier than January; but then she has to run again in November. The SOB didn't want to stick around, and has taken a job with one of those corporate interests he sold out to - DicksteinShapiro, one of the biggest energy lobbying firms in DC.

My friend, Kevin Powell, is trying to unseat Eldolphus Towns this year. When willing candidates with progressive records come forward and state they want to challenge the incumbents who have sat in Congress so long, their asses are glued to their offices, I say we hold fundraisers, canvass, pass out copies of the Report Card, so their constiuents get informed as to how well their interests have been represented.

One comment listed the following for primary challenges either in November or in 2010:

Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (Hanky Head)
Sheila Jackson-Lee (she's been banned from flying on American Airlines for acting a fool)
Kendrick Meek (he didn't learn jack from his mama)
Edolphus Towns
Artur Davis (DLC candidate recruiter)
Emmanuel Cleaver

Here's a few I want to add:

Hank Johnson (AIPAC funded him to oust McKinney)
David Scott (DLC money man)
Yvette Clarke (Replaced a competent Congressman in Major Owens and is stinking up the joint)
Bobby Rush (the former Black Panther co-authored the bill to restrict the Internet, y'all)
Danny Davis (strong ties to the Moonies)

Here' some we need to keep until we can train their replacement

John Conyers (we don't need his wife as his replacement - too ghetto and I wouldn't like to turn on C-Span and see her reaching across the aisle to tear off someone's weave or wig like she's in a Detroit club)
Barbara Lee - my home representative who fights the good fight
Bobby Scott and Jim Clyburn - they fight the good fight, especially for the brothers in the joint coming out and trying to reacclimate to being out of jail.

Some of you have said Maxine Waters should be on the list of those who got to go. I don't know; while she's made some mistakes, her voting records on the issues that matter to us has been stellar, and she's one of the few members of Congress still fighting to get legislation passed for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Now that Obama has closed the Deal, I say it's time to send a message to those CBC members who are cowering in fear that they're going to get challengers to their seats, and that they're going to actually have to work to get re-elected, instead of mailing in their performances as legislators. And I'm all for that.