The
DISH
"Unbossed
and unbought news and information you can use"
Volume 6 Issue 28…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…July 18, 2003
On
Liberty and Slavery
By George Moses Horton
Alas! And am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!
How long have I in bondage lain,
And languished to be free!
Alas! And must I still complain--
Deprived of liberty.
Oh, Heaven! And is there no relief
This side the silent grave-
To soothe the pain - to quell the grief
And anguish of a slave?
Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound,
Roll through my ravished ears!
Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
And drive away my fears.
Say unto foul oppression, Cease:
Ye tyrants rage no more,
And let the joyful trump of peace,
Now bid the vassal soar.
Soar on the pinions of that dove
Which long has cooed for thee,
And breathed her notes from Africa's grove,
The sound of liberty.
On, Liberty! Thou golden prize,
So often sought by blood-
We crave thy sacred sun to rise,
The gift of nature's God!
Bid Slavery hide her haggard face,
And barbarism fly:
I scorn to see the sad disgrace
In which enslaved I lie.
Dear Liberty! Upon they breast,
I languish to respire;
And like the Swan unto her nest,
I'd to the smiles retire.
Oh, blest asylum - heavenly balm!
Unto the boughs I flee-
And in they shades the storm shall calm,
With songs of Liberty!
About Me: A slave belonging to the Hortons of Northampton County, North Carolina, George Moses Horton learned to read and write and began to compose verse while hired out to the president of the University of North Carolina. Students paid him to compose love poems. His first book of poetry, Hope of Liberty (1829) did not secure his freedom. The year his Naked Guns (1865) came out, he joined the Union Army. Little else is known about him, but his work clearly refutes the idea of the contented slave. (Source: Kaleidoscope: Poems by American Negro Poets, edited by Robert Hayden)
The DISH on LIBRadio.com
On Friday, July 18, 2003 from 9 - 11 AM (EST), members of The DISH editorial staff will join host Keidi Obi Awadu of Black Star Media in a lively discussion on topics ranging from current affairs to slavery and reparations on LIBRadio.com, an online radio station on Live365.com. Set your alarm clocks and tune in to LIBRadio at http://www.live365.com/stations/consrast. For more information, call Keidi at 310.673.5423.
Electoral College: Sidestepping Democracy
In the summer of 1787, fifty-five relatively young men met in Philadelphia to consider the structure of the United States government. Representing the propertied class, these wealthy white men feared what one of them called the "turbulence and follies" of democracy or "mob rule." So, the US founding fathers dismissed the democratic principles of the Declaration of Independence and created a republic built on the institution of slavery.
Adopted July 16, 1787, the Great Compromise settled the major convention dispute between large and small states and free and slave states. The dispute revolved around congressional representation, based on population, and taxation. To pacify slave states, slaves, who were not allowed to vote, were to be counted as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of determining representation in the lower house of Congress or the US House of Representatives and for taxation. Small and large states received equal representation (2 members) in the upper house of Congress or the US Senate. The Great or 3/5 Compromise legalized slavery.
Conceived as a compromise between direct popular elections (democracy) for the nation's highest office and the rule of appointment or inheritance, the Electoral College emerged as the mechanism for electing US presidents and vice presidents. Originally, the Constitution required the state legislatures to choose electors equal to the number of senators and representatives to which the state was entitled in Congress. (The parts of the Constitution governing the election of the president and vice president are Article II, Section I, and the 12th, 20th, and 23rd Amendments.) Collectively, these electors are the electoral college. They meet in their respective state capitals on Monday after the second Wednesday in December in presidential election years to vote for president and vice president.
The electors of each state transmit to the president of the Senate, i.e., the sitting vice president, certified lists of votes cast for president and vice president. On the following January 6, the president of the Senate, presiding at a joint session of both houses of Congress, opens the certificates, and the votes are counted by tellers. A majority of votes by all the electors appointed is necessary for the election of a president, and similarly for the vice president.
If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the president from among the top three candidates. This happened in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was chosen by the House, and in 1824, when John Quincy Adams was chosen. Since the winning candidate in each state receives all that state's electoral votes, it is possible for the losing presidential candidate to receive more popular votes than the man elected by the college. This happened in 1824 with Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, in 1876 with Samuel J. Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes, in 1888 when Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland and in 2000 with Al Gore and George W. Bush, who received a favorable ruling by the US Supreme Court to receive Florida's electoral college votes.
Election 2000 highlighted the undemocratic nature of the presidential selection process. In the first months after the Court decision in Bush v. Gore, the electoral college received some attention, but no serious effort to stop sidestepping democracy. (Sources: Encyclopedia Americana and Current, Williams and Friedel, American History: A Survey)
To Bush Bombers!
Poets for Peace sends the world kudos, kudos, kudos for the overwhelming response to the "Bomb Bush with Truth Campaign." Bush declared "getting rid of Saddam Hussein justifies the war." "Regime change," not weapons of mass destruction (WMD), liberation or democracy was Bush's aim and justification for an unprovoked war. The truth is out; people from around the world are demanding answers, actions from world leaders and accountability regarding the war in Iraq.
It is clear, young Americans are dying for "regime change." Naked aggression, like Adolf Hitler taking the Sudetenland and Poland, Bush, Dick Cheney and their oil buddies are reaping the benefits of the US takeover of Iraq. A cowed UN is hostage to US threats and the ICC is barely an infant, while the media is nothing more than a White House propaganda wing.
Accepting US tyranny in Iraq, we all become Iraqis. All we have are our voices. We must use them through email, snail and voice mail or visits to your representatives to demand public hearings, open investigations, a special prosecutor and indictments, if warranted, against all who lied to justify invading Iraq, as well as, those covering up to protect liars. Kudos to the people for bombing Bush with truth!
The Void
By John Burl Smith
A leadership void engulfed Democrats following election 2000. Viewed as in retreat by demoralized rank and file, bleak prospects shroud election 2004. Rather than attacking George W. Bush and Republicans on the economy, ENRON, FCC, education, racism, poverty, discrimination, health care and Social Security, "the Leadership Council" and powerful "blue dog" Democrats "support the president." Backing Bush's lies, they pushed another "Tonkin Gulf" resolution through Congress authorizing war in Iraq. Consistently, "Dixiecrat" neo-conservatives block efforts to broaden the leadership base of the party. Steadfastly, like strict construction judges, they fight expanding freedom of choice and expression, as well as, equal protection.
Democrat leadership is conflicted, defending Bush's lies. Clearly, Bush's stated aim in Iraq was "regime change." Saying and doing whatever was necessary, the weight of truth is unraveling Bush's claim that war was the only way to be sure about weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Desperately, Democrat scarecrows, tin men, cowardly lions and "blue dogs" are "duct taping plastic" to patch holes in an effort to protect Bush from fall out. Insisting that "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction constitute an imminent threat to the US and its neighbors," Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Power concocted lies that Leadership Council Democrats insist do not matter, "Saddam is gone," i.e., regime change, mission accomplished.
No lie is strong enough to hold truth down forever. Like flowers growing up through concrete, reaching for sun rays, truth will find the light of day. Using integrity and credibility as standards to analyze Democrat candidates for president, US Rep. Dennis Kucinich is the only bright spot on the left. Poets for Peace can "bomb Bush with truth," but he must be defeated at the polls. Kucinich talks to the left but organizes his campaign and staff from the right. Accordingly, crafty operatives seeking issues that resonate are watching Kucinich. Their goal is to narrow his base and siphon off support by cooping his arguments and couching them in neo-conservative rhetoric.
Casting Kucinich as "too far to the left" helps Bush and traps Democrats in the same "I support the president," crossfire from 2002. Turnout 75%'s documentation in 2000 shows that blacks controlled the vote for president of the USA. Republicans did everything they could to win at the polls. However, with only about 15% of eligible black voters casting ballots, the US Supreme Court had to step in and stop the counting of legally cast votes in order to award Bush the presidency. Ambushed by a Supreme Court lead coup d'etat, Senate Democrats turned their backs on blacks when they did not insist our votes be counted and refused to join the effort mounted by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others to contest the certification of Florida's electoral college votes.
Kucinich and others, hoping to defeat Bush in 2004, must begin now building infrastructure, planning logistics and procuring supplies for voter registration drives, door-to-door/street canvassing and poll workers. Democrats must campaign aggressively in disaffected urban centers and demoralized rural communities. Success lies with youth, immigrants, females, Hispanics, blacks, Asian and Native American people. Democrats must put their campaign dollars where their mouths are and organize aggressively where their votes are. The votes are here. The question is, which candidate will cross the line and step into the void?
Disgruntled says: Whenever judicial appointments make the news, recall George W. Bush's campaign promise to apply a strict construction litmus test to judges. Strict construction case law begins with the Dred Scott slave case and flows through Plessy v. Ferguson. It makes white supremacy the law of the land, leaving the 3/5 or Great Compromise of Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution intact. Article 1 is the first law; it is the foundation of the Electoral College, which circumvents one-person one-vote, the cornerstone of democracy. Bush's litmus test threatens black progress!
Disgruntled feels: Scapegoat! Grassroots activists bet heads would roll even before career company man CIA Director George Tenet was forced to fall on his sword over the Bush state of the union assertion that Iraq tried to acquire uranium from an African country. The unsupported claim, among other things, has gotten the Bush White House in deep water and further eroded US credibility globally. More than a few black tokens, i.e., Rice and Powell, and a scapegoat's swan song are needed to satisfy the clamor for Bush's head!
Disgruntled wants to know: An avowed white racist opened fire at a Meridian, Mississippi Lockheed Martin plant killing five people and wounding eight others. In less than forty-eight hours, the bloody event ceased to be newsworthy. Still receiving prime time news coverage more than two weeks after the alleged incident is the possible arrest of Kobe Bryant for sexual assault. While it happened on the same day as the Lockheed Martin killings, the heinous murder of five members of a black family, possibly by a black estranged spouse, is still an evening news story. Even comments by baseball coach Dusty Baker to the effect that blacks and Hispanics are better suited for the sun and heat of baseball in summer, after all blacks were brought to this country because they could handle these very elements, aired longer than the shootout at Lockheed Martin. Now, why is that?
Buddy Ballot Plan
For 2004, Turnout 75% proposes a "buddy ballot plan" to increase voter turnout. Consider this, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes. If everyone who voted against Bush in 2000 commit to do the same in 2004 and find one person that did not vote in 2000 to become their voting buddy and actually vote, we can increase the margin by more than one million. To work, "buddies" must accompany each other to the polls to ensure each cast a ballot.
We must reverse the coup of 2000 with a voter turnout so overwhelming, the court would not dare enter presidential politics again. Americans must assert their right to choose elected officials in what is touted as the greatest democracy in recorded history. It is time all US citizens enjoy the democratic freedom and rights espoused in the Declaration of Independence. The people do not need a political candidate to excite them. Not counting all votes cast in a presidential election and taking away personal freedoms under the guise of "homeland security" should be motivation enough. Find a "buddy" today and commit to vote against Bush in 2004! It is time to take back our personal freedoms and the people's house!
On Fancy Speeches and Empty Bellies!
By Dot
Employment is the primary source of income or economic welfare for US households. The unemployment rate is a measure of the pain caused when all willing and able workers are not fully employed. Economic downturns, i.e., recessions and depressions, mean increased pain. Since George W. Bush's January 2001 inauguration, nearly 3 million jobs have vanished. While the Bush Administration claims the economy is on the mend, the national unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.4 percent in June. The pain from this job hemorrhaging is disproportionately borne by blacks.
Historically, blacks are the last hired and the first fired in good and bad economic times. With the black unemployment rate double the white rate, median black household incomes mimic the 3/5 Compromise. Recent unemployment numbers continue this historic pattern. The June unemployment rate for whites was 5.5 percent, up slightly from May's 5.4 percent. The black and Hispanic rates were 11.8 and 8.4 percent, respectively. For blacks, this represented an increase of one percent from 10.8 percent in May and a .2 percent increase for Hispanics from 8.2 percent. Yet, these unemployment rates show only part of the pain. For teenagers, who usually do most of their work during the summer months, the unemployment rates were 16.5 and 39.3 percent for white and black teens, respectively.
On Goree Island off the coast of Senegal, the point from which many slave ships sailed to the Americas, Bush delivered a fancy speech, even recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. He has not addressed the subject at home, nor has his economic policies sought to change the historic pattern of pain created when the US embraced slavery. He even recalled his low-level delegation from the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), rather than have them present where the subject of reparations for slavery might be entertained. Fancy speeches create feel good moments for those who are full and in power, but they do nothing for the powerless dealing with empty bellies.
Mailbox:
E-Mails, Faxes & Telephone Calls
Email troynotorious@yahoo.com "I am a black player 100 percent. I mean when I first came along, I said I'm not playing for anybody; I'm just playing for myself. But, in reality, I know I'm playing for a lot of people. I'm playing for all those little girls, who never watched tennis, who never had a chance to play tennis, who might say, "I want to be Serena Williams, I want to be Venus Williams." And, I feel very proud to be taking on that responsibility." - Serena Williams
THINC || 2003 Issues || The DISH