Katrina, War, Impeachment and the Black Gulag
by Glen Ford
August 27, 2007
Black Agenda Report
It is way past time that long-held assumptions of how African Americans
will forge a path to social justice and political self-determination be
re-examined. Two-plus generations of reflexive fealty to the Democratic
Party has resulted in Democrats behaving more like Republicans.
Uncritical applause for Black faces in high places has brought us
betrayal on an unprecedented scale. At this juncture in history, African
Americans face the political crises of Katrina, escalating imperial war
as national policy, failure to impeach flagrant criminals in public
office, and the ongoing horror of mass Black incarceration. Past
“allies” and current misleaders must be discarded, and a new movement,
begun.
We are witnessing the final dissolution of both the Democratic Party and
established Black leadership formations as effective agents of domestic
social change and world peace. Corporate power has swallowed the Party
whole, and is smothering or absorbing the residue of what was once a
powerful Black people’s movement. The devastation is all but complete,
as is evident when one examines the response to the crises of Katrina,
the Iraq War, the necessity to impeach, and the hellish and inexorable
growth of a Black American Gulag through mass incarceration.
The Black Gulag - the product of a people-savaging national public
policy that began as a mass white societal response to the Sixties
Freedom Movement and metastasizes each year regardless of crime rates -
isn’t even an issue for Democratic leadership. No wonder, since both
Democrats and Republicans have conspired over two generations to place a
million African Americans behind bars at any given moment, creating a
toxic prison culture that poisons every arena of Black life. During the
watch of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, more
Blacks were thrown in prison than under any other president in history.
Mass Black incarceration is not a priority among Black elite formations,
either. A deep historical current in Black political culture avoids even
a discussion of horrendous imprisonment rates that tear at the very
fibers of Black society. Preachers would rather internalize and moralize
the ongoing state assault on Black life, while the Black misleadership
class, as I have written, is “more embarrassed than outraged” at the
volcanic emergence of a million-man-and-woman Black Prison Nation,
through which doors multiple millions of the next generation will pass.
The battle against Black mass incarceration cannot be said to have been
lost, because it never began. These are the rotten fruits of the
impotence of - no, betrayal by - the class that demanded the Freedom
Movement be shut down, after Dr. Martin Luther King’s death, so that
they would have the space and quiet to pursue newly available business
and public office opportunities. Vote for me, or support my economic
upward mobility, and it will set you free, said the New Class. They
lied, and the masses of Black Americans are less politically focused
than at any time since Emancipation. More have lost their basic freedoms
than at any time since slavery.
Katrina - the monstrous boil on the national political body that burst
with the levees, two years ago - should have been a watershed moment for
Black America, a grotesque but clarifying historical window into the
real nature of U.S. society and its rulers. For the masses of Blacks, it
was. Young people who never knew Jim Crow in the raw were forced to
recognize basic truths, as when Kanye West uttered what to him seemed a
revelation: “George Bush doesn’t like Black people.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, having left Katrina out of her “first
hundred hours” agenda in January, this month toured New Orleans with a
15-member Democratic delegation, making the proper noises of solidarity
with the fraction of the Black population that remains. She was also
careful not to offend the white Democrats who are as culpable as
Republicans in preventing the city’s far-flung Diaspora from achieving
their “right to return,” “right of citizenship in the city,” “right to
participate in the rebuilding” of New Orleans and the other rights
outlined in the 12-point Citizens Bill of Rights promulgated by the
African American Leadership Project, September 22 2005, less than a
month after the deluge.
Pelosi’s response to the pleas of Black New Orleans was to muzzle House
Democrats, including the Congressional Black Caucus, barring them from
participating in Republican-led hearings on Katrina and its aftermath.
The rationale was that the GOP, then in control of all committees, would
dominate the conversation. But of course, the same logic would have
precluded Democratic participation in any hearings on any subject while
Republicans remained in the majority - yet the injunction was only
imposed on Katrina. Pelosi’s real concern was that the Katrina issue
was, in Chuck D’s immortal words, “Too Black, Too Strong,” and might
cause white voters to identify the Democratic Party too closely with
African Americans, endangering prospects of capturing the House in 2006.
As a body, the Congressional Black Caucus swallowed Pelosi’s Kool-Aid,
with the notable exception of Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who participated in
the hearings in defiance of leadership.
The same “don’t get too close to the Blacks” rationale dictated that
Pelosi leave Katrina out of her “first one hundred hours” pitch in the
2006 mid-term campaign. Then, this Spring, Pelosi unleashed Black
lawmakers and others to hold hearings on a variety of Katrina-related
subjects -a gesture that looked more like loosening a safety valve on
Black discontent than a prelude to restoration of New Orleans’ original
population. Black Democratic Whip James Clyburn (SC) announced the
belated offensive, but 18 months after the catastrophe, the historical
moment had passed, skillfully circumvented by the congresswoman from San
Francisco, and acquiesced to by a meek and compliant Black Caucus. There
can be no doubt that, as the 2008 elections near, Pelosi will again
quash all substantive proposals to make Black New Orleans whole, once
again aggressively shedding excessive Democratic Party identification
with Black interests. The August Democratic tour of the Gulf was a
pitiful gesture, a harmless and farcical “Black Summer of Discontent”
that will pass unnoticed by history.
Black misleadership, as presently constituted, is also fated for the
dustbin, having utterly failed the historical test of Katrina. As I
wrote in October, 2005:
“Cruel history presents the catastrophe as an unwanted opportunity, a
test of Black people’s capacity for the operational unity craved by the
vast bulk of African Americans. The pain and anger in Black America is
all but universal, and demands collective action, the outcome of which
will largely define the true State of Black America as it has evolved
over the last two generations.”
If Katrina could not galvanize Black institutional structures to
decisive action, resulting in the mobilization of millions, then those
structures are moribund and flaccid. The lost opportunity for mass Black
action can never be regained. Contrast this with the response of mainly
Hispanic immigrants, their sons and daughters, to the threat of
repressive legislation. Millions of Latinos staged coordinated
demonstrations in scores of cities, with the active assistance of
Spanish-language media. Yet, on the Black side of the divide, as we
wrote in the inaugural issue of Black Agenda Report:
“If the national Black political infrastructure, such as it is, could
not set masses in motion after Katrina, when African Americans were as
one in their concentrated anger and collective will to do something,
then what currently passes for leadership will never effectively
mobilize Black folks for anything. They have lost the tools and desire
to fight, and cannot function as leaders even when the people cry out
for common action.
“Had Black people been called out en masse, they would have come - but
the historical moment has slipped away, wasted. In a few years, a new
generation of Black activists will deploy themselves in structures of
radical resistance, their world views shaped by the multiple crimes of
Katrina. But in the near term, it must be recognized that not only have
African Americans been numerically overtaken by Hispanics, we have been
eclipsed in mass organizing, as well.”
War - by now one of the few pistons running the engine of the U.S.
economy, while also guaranteeing its eventual collapse - is the enemy of
every agenda item of the Historical Black Consensus. George Bush’s
policy of endless warfare condemns Black America to permanent deferral
of urban transformation, in all its aspects. There can be no
revitalization of the cities - except under corporate terms under which
Black removal is a prerequisite - while the public treasury is poured
into the black hole of the War Industry.
In the aftermath of 9/11, decades of struggle against racial profiling
were erased in an instant; now, every non-Aryan-looking person is fair
game for profiling, and Black complaints are deemed petty, as if removed
from history. Vast income and wealth disparities must take a back seat -
all the way to the back - to the spending imperatives of war, most of
which ultimately winds up in the hands of what I dubbed the “Pirate
Class,” epitomized by Halliburton, Bechtel and other pillars of the
ruling order - which also happen to be the behemoth “reconstructors” of
the Katrina-ravaged Gulf region. Wars have always accelerated the rate
of structural change in societies. Corporate wars - the only kind the
U.S. wages, these days - direct all restructuring to the most
non-productive corporate coffers.
The forces that animate George Bush intend to keep the restructuring
process on full throttle. As I wrote in December, 2002, three months
before the U.S. invasion of Iraq:
“The predator-scavenger class must…reproduce itself to meet the
demands of permanent war, changing fundamentally the relationship of
forces within American business as a whole. The Cheney-Bush pirates are
about to birth a new brood of billionaire pillagers and parasites with
no direct connection to the well being of the domestic economy and those
of us who depend on it.”
Black folks used to complain about the abandonment of the cities, and
our resultant disproportionate suffering. Permanent War, an integral
component of the latest stage of U.S. imperialism, marginalizes everyone
but the super-privileged, and Black folks most of all. Yet much of Black
leadership and the African American public reflexively support Barack
Obama, whose imperial bent is not even closeted. Obama wants to add
100,000 additional soldiers and Marines to the U.S. Armed Forces - more
manpower for the imperial mission that feeds the coffers of War Industry
and starves out any hope of domestic social transformation. No “new” New
Orleans that embraces the aspirations of the original population - no
revitalized cities in which the current residents needs are served. No
wonder Obama has no plan for urban America, or to ameliorate rampaging
inequalities; militarism will ensure there will be no money, no matter
who is president.
Hillary Clinton, who garners most of the other fraction of Black
support, is wife of the man who crushed majority Democratic opposition
to NAFTA “free trade” legislation, in an alliance with Republicans. This
version of “free trade” and war are pieces of the same cloth, as are the
unequal rules of the dollar-based oil business, and international
bankers’ “debt” practices in the developing world. All must be backed up
by the ultimate threat of military enforcement of the prevailing order.
Thus, Obama’s call for 100,000 new troops as the U.S. continues its
unique “mission” in the world.
African Americans have historically opposed U.S. military adventures
abroad - “White Man’s Wars,” we used to call them - and still do, as all
the data show. But a bankrupt Black misleadership, many of whom mollify
their constituents with occasional anti-war rhetoric, at the end of the
day gives a pass to the militarism that will be the death of every Black
dream of a just society. Genuine anti-war lawmakers like California
congresspersons Maxine Brown and Barbara Lee are among the exceptions in
the Congressional Black Caucus; many other CBC members have signed on to
the Out of Iraq Caucus that Waters and Lee lead, but nevertheless vote
for continued funding of the war. In the Congress, Black leadership
becomes a charade, and “progressive” white Democratic leadership, the
mask Nancy Pelosi continues to wear, is most often mislabeled.
Impeachment - the only way to stop the criminals in power from
committing executive mayhem, and to prevent succeeding presidents of
either party from using the tools of oppression inherited from Bush - is
a no-brainer in Black America. As BAR’s Bruce Dixon wrote last week, “No
constituency is as heavily in favor of impeachment as Black America.”
The entire roster of the Congressional Black Caucus should be on record
as favoring impeachment of Bush and Cheney, by popular acclamation of
their constituents - but only a fraction are. African Americans and
genuine progressives look to my old friend, Rep. John Conyers, chairman
of the Judiciary Committee where impeachment proceedings must begin, as
a leader on this issue. But Conyers’ leader is Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker
of the House. Although many of us anticipated more of him in this
crisis, he cannot possibly be expected to act as a Black “leader.” He is
embedded in a white dominated Democratic Party machinery that long ago
decided Blacks were an albatross around their necks - despite the fact
that many of them cannot win dogcatcher offices without us.
If there is a fool out there that thinks we are advocating some kind of
accommodation with Republicans, he should check into the nearest psych
ward. We must go back to basics, to the ingredients that brought us so
far in such a short time in the brief period of the Freedom Movement.
Moribund misleadership must be replaced by mass mobilizers, organizers
responsive to the essentially progressive instincts of the Black public
at-large - a people whom noted political scientist Michael Dawson
describes as politically akin to “Swedish Social Democrats,” far to the
left of what passes for “liberal” in white American terms.
Our enemy is corporate capital, which has polluted every nook and cranny
of electoral and traditional Black politics. The Congressional Black
Caucus has been broken like an egg. Black institutions contort
themselves and their agendas to seek corporate funding. The corporate
media voice is a monotone, celebrating the rise of a “new” generation of
“Black leaders” that rejects confrontation with the powers-that-be and,
like Barack Obama, questions the relevance of race-based grievances.
That’s money talking. But we are a loud people, and our voices will be
heard.
Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be reached at
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.comThis email address is being protected
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