Snowed In

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” “There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said. (USA Today)

Latoya Peterson over at Racialicious has a great analysis of this comment.  It’s true that Clinton has some (marginal?) advantage amongst white working class voters.  That means she may be better qualified to compete for the white, working class vote in the general election.  If that’s all she was trying to say, I think it’d be a pretty uncontroversial comment.

But that’s not the conclusion she is trying to reach.   She is trying to make a point about the breadth of her coalition and therefore her electability as compared to Obama’s.  As Peterson points out:

It doesn’t matter that Barack has more delegates and Clinton and Obama are neck and neck in the popular vote. No, fuck that. He still isn’t electable. The white vote is important, but it is not a monolith. But that doesn’t seem to matter. Obama will lose white votes (despite showing more than respectable numbers) and that alone should show us that he’s not electable. (Latoya Peterson)

Peterson also points to this quote from dnA over at Too Sense, which I think sums up Clinton’s intentions (conscious or not) quite well:

This kind of comment is less a description than an agitator, it’s meant to give white voters the impression that they would be “disenfranchised” by an Obama win. It’s a not so subtle effort to evoke racial resentment over Obama’s success. (dnA)

If The Boss is endorsing Obama, my mind is made up.

“Even when factoring in 9/11, your chance over your lifetime of being killed by a terrorist is about one in 80,000, or about the same as being hit by an asteroid.” - John Mueller

An article about the violence in Kenya caught my eye this afternoon. Things there are very serious.

The core of the conflict is that many Kenyans feel that the recent elections, which kept president Mwai Kibaki in office, were rigged. Mr. Kibaki belongs to the Kikuyu tribe, the largest in Kenya with about 20% of the population.

Violence is erupting across the nation, often across ethnic lines. On January 1st, 35 Kikuyu people were burned to death in a church which was acting as a refugee shelter.

More recently, Mellitus Mugabe Were, a 40 year old member of the Orange Democratic Movement, was dragged from his car and shot to death in front of his house on Monday. Were had been working hard to bring about peace, shuttling between tribes to try to bring about a peaceful resolution to the violence. Were was Luhya, and his widow is Kikuyu.

Melitus Mugabe Were, 1968-2008

Afghan journalist Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, 23, has been sentenced to death for printing out and distributing an article asking why men are allowed four wives, but women cannot have multiple husbands.

Sentenced to death.

This is a country in which George W. Bush has declared victory over terrorism. Bush called Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s current leader a man of “honor, courage and skill helping to build a new and democratic Afghanistan.

Fuck that noise.

Today, José Padilla, an American citizen who was detained by the government for 4 years before being charged with a crime, was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

This is scary to me for two reasons. First, the constitution grants us the right to a speedy trial, and the right to be informed of the charges against us and the proceedings of our trial. Padilla was declared an enemy combatant and denied his right. What this means is that the US military can detain any American citizen, based on whatever definition of “military combatant” they want, for years, with no recourse from congress or the judiciary.

The second reason it is scary is that there is no evidence Padilla actually participated in any sort of attack. He applied to attend (but did not, as far as I can tell) a terrorism training camp, and he was in contact with terrorists.

But the constitution also grants us freedom of association, and freedom of speech. American citizens must be able to communicate freely with others, and they must be able to spread ideas freely. Even if the ideas they are spreading are how to make bombs and the people they are associating with are criminals. These are the rights the constitution lays out, which provide an important check to the government’s power.

Now, when there is clear conspiracy to commit a crime, that’s a different story. When the ideas being spread are plans to kill someone, or a person’s activity goes beyond associating with someone to funding their activities, then that’s a crime. Trial should be brought and carried out under due process of law.

But that was not the case here. Former Reagan staffer Paul Craig Roberts said it well:

“The incompetent ‘Padilla Jury’ has done Americans and their liberty far more damage than will ever be done by terrorists, other than those in our criminal justice (sic) system who now wield the powers that Bentham wanted to give them.”

Please spread the word: our right to a speedy trial, our right to be informed of charges against us, our right to free speech, and our right to association are getting weaker every day.

watch

I’ve been reading Malcolm X’s The Ballot or The Bullet speech. It’s an incredible speech, which changed my mind about many things.

X addresses the failure of the legislature to follow through on campaign promises made to black Americans:

In this present administration they have in the House of Representatives 257 Democrats to only 177 Republicans. They control two-thirds of the House vote. Why can’t they pass something that will help you and me? In the Senate, there are 67 senators who are of the Democratic Party. Only 33 of them are Republicans. Why, the Democrats have got the government sewed up, and you’re the one who sewed it up for them. And what have they given you for it? Four years in office, and just now getting around to some civil-rights legislation. Just now, after everything else is gone, out of the way, they’re going to sit down now and play with you all summer long — the same old giant con game that they call filibuster. All those are in cahoots together. Don’t you ever think they’re not in cahoots together, for the man that is heading the civil-rights filibuster is a man from Georgia named Richard Russell. When Johnson became president, the first man he asked for when he got back to Washington, D.C., was “Dicky” — that’s how tight they are. That’s his boy, that’s his pal, that’s his buddy. But they’re playing that old con game. One of them makes believe he’s for you, and he’s got it fixed where the other one is so tight against you, he never has to keep his promise.

I grew up hearing that Malcolm X advocated violence. But reading this speach, I see that X is advocating something much more profound:

When ever you’re going after something that belongs to you, anyone who’s depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal. And this was pointed out by the Supreme Court decision. It outlawed segregation. Which means segregation is against the law. Which means a segregationist is breaking the law. A segregationist is a criminal. You can’t label him as anything other than that. And when you demonstrate against segregation, the law is on your side. The Supreme Court is on your side.

Now, who is it that opposes you in carrying out the law? The police department itself. With police dogs and clubs. Whenever you demonstrate against segregation, whether it is segregated education, segregated housing, or anything else, the law is on your side, and anyone who stands in the way is not the law any longer. They are breaking the law, they are not representatives of the law. Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I’m telling you, kill that dog. I say it, if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you’ll put a stop to it. Now, if these white people in here don’t want to see that kind of action, get down and tell the mayor to tell the police department to pull the dogs in. That’s all you have to do. If you don’t do it, someone else will.

As I understand it, X is not advocating violence, X is advocating self defense. X is saying that if someone’s rights are being infringed upon by the very people who are supposed to be protecting their rights, they are then forced fight for those rights, and should not be ashamed to die for them.

Tonight I was also reading about the violent resistance which broke out in Brooklyn in 1966 in response to the city’s failure to follow through on promises to create a review board that would create some accountability for the city’s police. When you cannot trust the police to protect you under the law, and when you have no representation in the government, and when you are systematically excluded from voting, where else can you turn but violent resistance?

Reading all of this, I’m constantly reminded of current events. Voter disenframchisement. Racist police. Lack of political representation and failure to follow through on campaign promises.  I’ve seen them all in the news in the last few years, if not months.

I was watching this video of Mitt Romney being asked whether he thinks of himself as a “politician” or a “statesman”.  Romney cites President Clinton as an example of a politician, describing the his decision making strategy:

“We think often times of Bill Clinton as somebody who looked at the polls.  He was polling in the white house all the time to see how people felt, and we felt that he was deciding what to do based on what people thought.”

After a pregnant pause, Romney goes on to describe what a statesman does:

“A statesman on the other hand is a person who you think of who understands what he believes or what she believes is right for the country and does those things and hopes to convince the American people they’re right.”

It makes me wonder: is our electoral system about electing someone who will try to represent the wishes and desires of the nation, or is it about electing someone who we trust to represent our values, and then empowering them to make decisions on our behalf, possibly without our input?

The reality of social movements is that they tend to be populated by the people who are most effected by the movement. The civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s was predominantly African American. The feminist movement is driven by women. I’ve found myself more and more interested in participating in these movements, but I often find myself without good role models. It’s not appropriate for me to emulate Claudette Colvin or Malcom X or Dead Prez. I’m not black. Nor can I emulate Virginia Woolf or Andrea Dworkin or Liz Phair. I’m not a woman.

But I’ve found a few good role models. I see pro-feminist things in the men around me that I can emulate, even men who don’t identify as pro-feminist. And really, many things that women feminists do are totally appropriate for men to do: defying gender stereotypes, calling people out on sexism, spreading information about sexist events as they happen around us.

One of the best recommendations I think I’ve gotten from women feminists is that I should be constantly checking my privilege. That whenever I am doing something or expecting someone else to do something I should think about what role privilege played in making it easier or harder for us.

The trouble is: I’m a white, straight-acting male, and that simple fact makes me blind to a lot of things. I’ve never had to think about whether people thought I got a job because of my gender. I’ve never had to try to reverse that, and until fairly recently I wasn’t aware that some women and minorities have to worry about that. Not every woman and every minority has to worry about it, but I’ve certainly benefited by the fact that I was born into a group of people who is categorically exempt from that concern.

To make this job easier, a number of “Privilege Checklists” have been fashioned, to help people see privileges that might be invisible to them:

White Privilege Checklist

Male Privilege Checklist

Straight Privilege Checklist

Non-Trans Privilege Checklist

Update:

Being Poor

Average Sized Privilege Checklist

Able-Bodied Privilege Checklist

Obviously, it’s useful to read those checklists that apply to you. But the ones they don’t apply to you (because you’re a person of color or queer or female or transgendered) might be worthwhile to look at too. Because maybe there are privileges you enjoy that others in your gender/orientation/race do not. There are privileges on the Straight Privilege Checklist that apply to me, and privileges that don’t.

I kind of feel like these things are important to know.