“Scenes We’d Like to See”

Billmon has it right, this is a scene we’d like to see:

Jesus Cares for the Poor…

It is encouraging to see that we, progressives, are finally figuring out that we must be more vocal and assertive if we’re to “win the hearts and minds” of our fellow Americans. With that in mind, South Dakota Democrats have taken to the streets:

Identity Politics II

Aside from merely interesting, race/ethnic or identity politics is such a curious subject — particularly as it relates to African-American and European-American relations, given the “odious history of slavery” (and all that came after) in our country. Increasingly, however, when we speak of race relations, the picture MUST be more complex than merely how it’s routinely framed; that is, I belive that when the phrase “race relations” is uttered, it’s often used as shorthand for “black and white race relations”. Of course, in many parts of the country this dynamic still holds; however, more and more, specially in our urban centers (particularly in the so-called “Blue States”), when we speak of race relations solely in terms of “black and white”, we leave out a growing numbers of Americans.

I’m a 31 year old Latino that, like many progressives, specially non-European American progressives, my formative introduction to politics and community activism was largely influenced by my early involvement in identity politics organizations (i.e., Latino student organizations). Accordingly, much of my early political consciousness was centered around the idea of Chicanismo and of bridging nationalistic schisms among the various Latino communities — so that Latinos in the US could more uniformly assert political influence. My friends and I saw the African-American activist community of the 50s and 60s as the model to follow. Now, please keep in mind that we were just a bunch of very young people looking for ways to help our community, and our organizing efforts often fell miles short of the goals. However, my friends and I all learned many important lessons.

The most important lesson that I learned from my early experience with organizations centered around identity politics was to recognize the limits of that model of community organizing. Hmmm… perhaps that’s too strong a statement, rather, I should say, personally, I found the model of identity politics organizing to be limiting. Of course, racism persists and it always will. Of course, homophobia persists and it always will. Of course, sexism persists and it always will. Of course, xenophobia persists and it always will. Why do I belive that these social maladies will always exists? Because, like terrorism, these are conditions that cannot be 100% eradicated; as long as the name of the game is access to finite resources, the need for a scapegoat will persists. But, as I tend to do, I’ve gonne off in a tangent… back to my point.

What I found personally limiting about identity politics organizing is how hard it was to abandon the old models, and to look at things anew and across communities. Now, I ended up finding the traditional socioeconomic model (nothing new about it), rather than the identity politics model, more flexible and better suited for the populist (and I hope, progressive) politics that’s just around the bend. For me, this doesn’t mean that the dialogue on race relations ends. However, I personally find the need for a socioeconomic dialogue, across communities, increasingly resonant and, too, think that this conversation would afford us a much wider net.

Let me just add: as long as the social maladies that I listed above persist, there’ll exist the need for the identity politics organizing model; and, too, as long as socioeconomic disparities persist, there’ll be the need for the socioeconomic (progressive populist) model. Therefore, it looks like those of us in the progressive community that advocate or emphasize one approach over the other, will need to collaborate, coordinate and depend on each other — just as our opposition, the corporatist and social conservatives, have done in the other side.

John Kerry: They Think it’s All About Them…

I think that John Kerry’s new USA Today ad is strong and deserves to be seen by our fellow citizens. If you’ve got $25 bucks to chip in, please click on the image below to do your bit to get the ad published:

Impeach Bush: “Facts Were Fixed”

Since this weekend, when I learned that The Times of London had reported on “The Secret Downing Street Memo,” (archived PDF) I’ve had an on going conversation with two friends at work. As I’ve mentioned to my friends, the Downing Street memo makes it clear that the Bush and Blair administrations were set on invading Iraq long before the two made their case for war to the world. In fact, as the until-now secret memo puts it, “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of invading Iraq — yes, that’s right, facts be damned.

Oh, but wait, before I go on, I have to get this off my chest: why is it that the Downing Street memo is not getting more coverage in our mainstream media? I mean, if — as so many folks in this country erroneously believe — our media is Liberal and is merely out to get Bush, don’t you think that our press would be tripping all over themselves to bring this revelation to the American public? Well, I’ve yet to see any news outlet give the memo the attention it rightfully deserves — of course, CNN is making sure that we know all the intricacies of the “run-away bride” story… and, shit, we should know better than to expect FauxNews to simply report and actually let us decide.

But I digress… back to my point.

What inspired me to write this post is the following: if ever there was a reason to impeach a president is the revelation that’s made in the Downing Street memo, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of invasion regardless of whether Iraq posed an actual threat to our country or to its neighbors. In fact, as the memo goes on to say:

By god, if our press were in fact Liberal or, at the very least, had the intestinal fortitude — heh, let me just say it, if our press had some balls — to do its job, the American public would already be clamoring for Bush’s impeachment. Of course, Congress, since its controlled by Republicans, will not move against their president.

Accordingly, as I always have to do to find out what is really going in my country, I have to look abroad for substantive news coverage; which is how I happened across this commentary on BuzzFlash:

A BUZZFLASH GUEST NEWS ANALYSIS
by Greg Palast

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has, “IMPEACH HIM” written all over it.

The top-level government memo marked “SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL,” dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WDM. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Read that again: “The intelligence and facts were being fixed….”

[...]

My colleagues in the UK press have skewered Blair, digging out more incriminating memos, challenging the official government factoids and fibs. But in the US press… nada, bubkiss, zilch. Bush fixed the facts and somehow that’s a story for “over there.”

The Republicans impeached Bill Clinton over his cigar and Monica’s affections. And the US media could print nothing else.

Now, we have the stone, cold evidence of bending intelligence to sell us on death by the thousands, and neither a Republican Congress nor what is laughably called US journalism thought it not worth a second look.

That says it all, doesn’t… the so-called liberal media and the entire Republican party establishment went into a feeding frenzy and impeached a president over a trumped up charge of perjury… a charge that, ultimately, was over nothing more than an affair between consenting adults and a blow job that — aside from a stain on a blue dress — did not indelibly mark the lives of thousands of American families whom had a member either die or sacrifice limb and blood for a war of choice.

Now, some defend Bush by reflexively refusing to accept that he lied, specially about something as grave as war. Accordingly, their response to impeachment goes something like this: Clinton committed perjury, whereas Bush hasn’t. Well, my simple response is to extend this challenge: appoint an independent investigator, and give that person the full resources of the American government for four years, at a cost of $72 million, and have that person investigate the Bush administration on anything related to his personal life or his administration, and I guarantee that Bush’s impeachment articles would rest on more than a mere blow job to remove him from office.