Letter: Discrimination in St. Patrick’s Day parade

  By

ireland-flagI submitted this letter to the editor of the Boston Globe last week — I don’t think they published it — regarding this story, which has been brewing for quite some time.

It’s absurd in 2014 that the organizers of the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade are still trying to block open LGBTQ participation. The day is an annual cultural and community tradition, and one certainly long-separated from any religious aspect. The parade aims to celebrate one of Boston’s communities – Irish-Americans – that, like every ethnic community, has LGBTQ members within it. The organizers are telling their own community that not everyone is welcome to be proud of their ethnic heritage. LGBTQ people have always been with us and aren’t going away. Every poll indicates that’s ok with about 9 in 10 Bay Staters. Rather than representing an integral part of Boston, the parade organizers have proven themselves deeply unrepresentative. (As an Irish-American, I certainly don’t feel represented by them.) Instead, they prattle on about “wrong messages” like it’s 1980. Get with the times. If you’re going to host a public parade on city streets, with city facilitation, then no discriminating against any of the city’s residents. The organizers should be ashamed of themselves.

 
While it’s perhaps not my primary self-identity, I am, in fact, old-school Irish-American. Pre-Potato Famine. My first Irish ancestor arrived during the American Revolution to help fight the British, who were still repressively occupying Ireland at the time. He fought in the Battle of Bennington in upstate New York. I don’t take kindly to people trying to suppress other people’s freedoms and identities, particularly when it’s coming from Irish-Americans, who’ve faced their share of terrible discrimination and should do better.

Clay Aiken (D) will challenge NC Republican Congresswoman

  By

clay-aiken-2011-flickr-TimmyGUNZClay Aiken, American Idol season 2 runner-up and a very successful singer, of Raleigh, North Carolina is throwing his hat into the political ring as a Democrat in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District. A lot of the articles I’ve seen have either failed to provide any context whatsoever or have written him off completely without much detail. So, I aim to remedy that here.

If nominated — he has to get past two other Democrats first in the May primary — Aiken would likely be challenging incumbent two-term Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers — known best for justifying Congress being paid during last year’s shutdown, saying “I need my paycheck. That’s the bottom line.” She’s also the Republican Women’s Policy Committee chairwoman.

Ellmers already faces a primary challenge, from the right, from a local right-wing radio host. She seems personally offended that Aiken is also daring to run against her and was quite mocking of him during a recent interview (audio).

Aiken plans to emphasize education (they’re trying to highlight past work in special education, but I’m not sure he actually spent a whole lot of time doing that), as well as job-creation and the usual stuff. He will come into the race with a lot of potential for self-funding (assuming his earnings haven’t dropped too dramatically in just the last couple years) and very high name recognition. In terms of the big picture for the U.S. House, Democrats would probably love to recapture that district, which — before it was redrawn — had once been historically black and was only lost to Ellmers in 2010 by fewer than 2,000 votes. Barack Obama won the old district in 2008 (but would have lost it heavily to McCain under the new lines).

That being said, the NC 2nd is a district that was drastically redrawn by the Republican legislature after 2010, to be a low-income and heavily white district with a 50-50 urban rural split. It has a 10 point Republican voter lean in the 2013 Cook PVI ratings, though it may be that those Republicans are more solid than the previous version of the district, since it was actually slightly more Republican on paper when it was held by Democratic Bob Rep. Etheridge. In the 2012 presidential election, it voted for Mitt Romney by 18 points.

So, it will be an uphill battle for any Democrat there, even without considering that it would be a midterm race (lower turnout) and that Aiken is openly gay in a state that just voted in 2012 to ban any legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Ellmers, while unpopular nationally as a person (her shutdown comments are the tip of an unpleasant iceberg), is a solid conservative in a new district that voted to re-elect her last time by a margin of over 45,000 votes or 15 points. But it’s probably worth noting that Mitt Romney outperformed her in the same election when her Democratic opponent in 2012 didn’t have much name recognition, which may demonstrate some vulnerability. Even so, it’s still a decisive result that will made it a challenge for any Democrat — even for someone like Aiken who could probably assemble a reasonably credible campaign.

Political bullying: Why Christie and LBJ aren’t at all the same

  By

Leaving aside the obvious way they aren’t at all the same — President and Senator Lyndon Johnson was a statesman while Governor Chris Christie most certainly is not — I found this distinction by Michael Zuckerman in The Atlantic to be particularly compelling and important to understand: “Americans may admire a politician who can play hardball, but it matters whether his victim is a political opponent or an innocent citizen.”

Now, with the caveat (which Zuckerman acknowledges too) that Congressman Johnson was definitely not a statesman and his election campaigns to the U.S. Senate included not just bullying but outright ballot-box stuffing, and keeping in mind Johnson’s advocacy for some unsavory policies along the way, on balance Johnson is most notable, in terms of results achieved, for his bullying of other Senators and members of Congress into accepting civil rights legislation, voting rights legislation, anti-poverty programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and much more. These helped millions and continue to do so today.

In general, Gov. Christie’s bullying has been of average people — including citizens asking reasonable questions at town hall meetings — and of far less powerful politicians in the state who aren’t really blocking him from achieving policy goals but are just insufficiently supportive of him personally. That’s not helping people. And his staff certainly hurt a lot of ordinary people (via hurricane relief withholding and bridge closures) in their quest to bully the mayors of Fort Lee and Hoboken for failing to support Christie’s re-election bid in a timely manner.

More from Zuckerman:

Many politicians accept the slings and arrows of the game because they accept the basic Machiavellian premise: “not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good,” as philosopher-turned-politician Michael Ignatieff has argued, “but also that they shouldn’t worry about it.” It’s the recognition that the political space is one of conflict, and one where morality is limited in some ways.

Even so, morality is not—and never should be—absent from the equation: The key stipulation, which Machiavelli took seriously, is “in the name of the public good.” In other words: You may have to do ruthless things to your political opponents, but you do those things because they help your constituents. It matters, in politics, who benefits.

Such is the case with LBJ’s strong-arm tactics. Yes, he deceived, threatened, and browbeat colleagues—”That man will twist your arm off at the shoulder and beat your head in with it,” Dixiecrat Senator Richard Russell, a staunch opponent of civil rights, famously observed. But we are, rightly, most tempted to forgive LBJ these trespasses when he undertook them on behalf of his constituents, especially disenfranchised black people in the South and poor people across America—when he was bullying, you might say, for a cause.

 
Americans crave a strong executive who gets things done. We’re a people of action who created a system designed to accomplish little, slowly. But Christie is doing it wrong.

American History: A bloody coup in the U.S.

  By

wilmingtonpress_540-2bf0830e2573b95312f000c316a44a5c57c107a2One of the reasons we have a month set aside to celebrate and remember Black History is because unfortunately the teaching of American History tends to leave it out the rest of the time (which is also why there’s never been a need for a White History Month). However, just because it isn’t taught doesn’t mean it’s unimportant or that it doesn’t count. Here’s one historical event I want to talk about today because — sad to say — I only just recently learned of it myself.

Did you know there was once a bloody coup d’état within the borders of continental United States?
Read more

Thailand opposition determined to end democracy

  By

As I discussed at great length previously on this blog and on the radio show, Thailand’s elitist and condescending opposition has decided that if they can’t win free elections, nobody gets any elections. Despite the Army’s significant refusal to help them (so far, this time), the opposition made a concerted effort this weekend to put force behind their threats. Not only will they boycott this month’s upcoming elections but they don’t want anyone else to be able to participate either — even if that means turning guns on their fellow citizens. From the NY Times, my emphasis added:

At least six people were injured Saturday in a prolonged daylight gun battle between protesters seeking to block the distribution of ballots in Bangkok and would-be voters demanding that protesters cease their attempts to obstruct national elections on Sunday.
[…]
Ignoring pleas by the United States and the European Union to respect the democratic process — and stoking the anger of many Thais eager to vote — the protesters have blocked the distribution of ballots in parts of Bangkok and southern Thailand, a stronghold of the opposition.

The shooting on Saturday raised fears about further violence during Sunday’s general election, when protesters say they plan to fill the streets and prevent voters from reaching polling stations.

Although they represent a minority of the Thai population of 65 million people, the protesters number in the hundreds of thousands in Bangkok and say they are a vanguard of a social movement to reform Thailand’s democracy. To do so, however, they say they need to suspend democracy and place the country in the hands of an unelected “people’s council” while changes are made.

 
This does not bode well for anyone.

Central African Republic: “Euphoric Destruction”

  By

Warning: This post contains descriptions of extreme violence.

The situation in Central African Republic has descended into total chaos and horrific violence that firsthand observers are comparing to scenes from the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 (although — not that this is any consolation — the rate of killing is nowhere near as high).

Over a hundred people in the capital were killed or wounded in the last four days, according to the Red Cross.

Antoine Mbao Bogo, head of the CAR’s Red Cross, said that a total of 35 bodies had been recovered from the streets in many areas of the city over the last three days and eight more bodies had been found on Friday morning.

He said the victims were from both the Muslim and Christian communities.

“A few weeks ago people were dying more from gun wounds… but now it is mostly from things like knives. Sometimes they burn the corpses,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa radio programme.

 
Human Rights Watch is claiming that French troops stood by and did nothing as two Muslim men were hacked to death and mutilated at the entrance of the Christian refugee camp at the capital airport in Central African Republic. The French Defense Ministry has yet to comment. The French troops say their mandate is limited to disarming the Muslim militias and does not include intervening when the Christian militias begin attacking.

Technically, this may even be correct, given the comments by the French Defense Minister back in December:

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the goal of the French military mission in the Central African Republic was to provide “a minimum of security to allow for a humanitarian intervention to be put in place”.

 
So, they are interpreting their mandate largely as a political security operation to pave the way for somebody else’s human security operation, which has yet to materialize. That’s not a particularly brave act. French peacekeeping troops, regardless of their orders, can and should act to protect civilians being killed in front of them — as a Dutch court ruled last year on their spineless peacekeepers in Bosnia in the 1995 Srebenica massacre. It’s a moral obligation to get involved when you’re an armed soldier seeing people commit murder in front of your very eyes.

Here’s another account also by Peter Bouckaert, director of emergencies for Human Rights Watch — one of the most vocal eyewitnesses offering news from the ground — published in The Independent:

Last Wednesday, immediately after the Séléka fled the Muslim neighbourhood of PK13 in Bangui, hundreds of anti-balaka fighters arrived, chasing away the remaining inhabitants, who fled to the relative safety of Rwandan peacekeepers at the scene. All around us, homes were being systematically looted and dismantled in an atmosphere of euphoric destruction. The main mosque was dismantled by a crowd of machete-wielding fighters who told us: “We do not want any more Muslims in our country. We will finish them all off. This country belongs to the Christians.”

I pleaded with the anti-balaka fighters to leave the PK13 residents alone, but they showed no sign of mercy, telling me: “You get them out of here, or they will all be dead by morning. We will take our revenge.”

The death records of the Bangui morgue read like a chapter from Dante’s Inferno: page after page of people tortured, lynched, shot, or burnt to death. The smell of rotting corpses is overwhelming, as when people die in such numbers, it is impossible to bury them immediately. On really bad days, no names are recorded, just the numbers of dead. In the 15 minutes we managed to remain amid the stench and horror, two more bodies arrived: a Muslim hacked to death with machetes, and a Christian shot dead by the Séléka.

 
The controversial “peacekeeping” troops from neighboring Chad continue to get into increasingly violent clashes with Christian militias and civilians as they evacuate their own citizens — and, unfortunately, the Séléka leaders who launched the waves of attacks in the first place.

In contrast, some of the other regional peacekeepers seem to be taking a more aggressive role in intervening between armed groups and unarmed civilian targets. For the Rwandan troops, who are by and large commanded by Tutsi officers who witnessed the 1994 anti-Tutsi genocide firsthand, this is deeply affecting.

A commander of the Rwandan troops told me that their intervention in the Central African Republic crisis is deeply personal for him and his troops: “What we see here reminds us of what we experienced in Rwanda in 1994,” he told me, “and we are absolutely determined not to let 1994 happen again.”

 
But they are utterly unprepared and under-equipped to cope with the scale of the unfolding violence. As in the Rwandan Genocide, it’s extremely hard for a small foreign peacekeeping force to stop autonomous, decentralized bands of machete-wielding irregulars and armed “civilians” who aren’t taking orders from anyone and have been whipped into a murderous frenzy.

Even the fresh UN troops from the EU probably won’t help as they’ve been tasked primarily with aiding the existing French protection details on the Christian camps in the capital. With the tables turned on the Muslim population, the Christians — while still at risk — aren’t the most vulnerable right now. The United Nations mission also remains in dire need of emergency funds.