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insights Archive for: February 2007
The Hell with "Phased"
posted by snarko on February 12 2007
It is a memory that rises up from a deep canyon of my mind. It was a brilliant spring morning in the capital city of Texas, one of those Austin days of early May when the blue sky and the lush greenery and the bright flora can meld into a vision of eternal springtime so inviting it makes the heart ache.
But the world was not a bright place that morning. A few days before Nixon had sent American troops across the border into Cambodia, a new wave of antiwar demonstrations was growing across the country, and the news of yesterday's Kent State shootings had spread like a white-hot wildfire. This was something very new for white middle-class America - its young shot dead by American soldiers on an American college campus, as a result of the rapidly metastasizing cancer within our body politic that was the Vietnam War.
Sometimes my memories make that morning seem like three lifetimes ago and sometimes it seems like yesterday. There we were, thousands of us, crowding together in the sunshine on the main mall of the UT-Austin campus giving our rapt attention to the amplified voice of a brilliant speaker by the name of Mickey Leland, whose eloquence and passion struck harmonic chords in all the thousands of us in unison. Mickey Leland spoke not to us but for us that day, as he poured everything he had into expressing for all of us what we were all thinking and feeling.
Our collective, massed frustration and rage over the mounting evils wrought by the vicious criminals who had wrecked the America we had all been taught we were going to inherit someday could no longer be kept at bay, we erupted en masse from that rally to occupy and shut down the University of Texas main campus as did our fellow students at campuses across the country, and a week of near-insurrection ensued across America that began the national turning of the tide.
Though so many of the circumstances are different now, in so many ways they are the same. A madman president and his madman regime seem hell-bent to continue down their madman path to wreak death, death, death on a world that billions of people simply want to live in peacefully and enjoy the lifetimes that they are given to live. In that way the times are the same.
But in another way the times are different. Whereas in that distant past May the general population of America was still bitterly divided over the merits of the Vietnam War, in our time today the majority of the general population is decisively opposed to the madman regime's lunacy. Whereas as of that May 37 years ago there was not yet a majority in our national Congress that opposed the madman regime's war, today there is.
This should make for a huge difference, shouldn't it? Our country will be pulling the plug on the neocons' thinly disguised attempt to resurrect the crusades of the 11th century, won't it? WON'T IT? How many more children of America will die in Mesopotamia for Bush's lies? What working class neighborhoods will they hail from? How many more mothers' hearts will lie broken for Bush's delusions of grandeur? How about the agony of the Iraqis? How many more of the daughters and sons of that ancient cradle of civilization will lose their lives to the growing carnage that Bush wrought?
The hell with "phased." There is only one way to get out and that is to GET OUT. NOW. Not to withdraw is to cut and run from sanity.
My report of the recent meeting between five of the 2006 statewide Democratic candidates and Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie
posted by snarko on February 1 2007
PART FOUR OF FOUR
We all thanked Boyd for his time.
As for the list of "commitments" Barbara Radnofsky itemized in her newsletter, apart from the fact that they are wishes rather than commitments, in my opinion they are superficial palliatives. The meeting confirmed my worst suspicion, that the party chairman and his team are either not willing or not able to examine the culture of insider dealing and the undemocratic practice of insiders secretly deciding that only some Democratic nominees are worthy of party support. They are not willing to examine it because they don't think anything is wrong with it. They simply don't see the problem. They are satisfied with low-expectation strategies and they are content with winning a few selected state house seats and counties and losing the big elections. They are either not willing or not able to understand the root causes of and the state party's necessary role in knocking out the defeatism that plagues this party.
SDEC Members Linda Perez of Wilson County (SD 21) and Lloyd Criss of Galveston (SD 11) are pushing for a rules change that would create a new standing committee of the SDEC, a Campaign Committee, to oversee the budget and operations of the state party's general election voter turnout campaigns, with a special emphasis on carrying Texas statewide for the Democratic ticket in 2008.
While the state party chair and TDP staff clearly need to be left with the discretion to make on-the-spot tactical and operational decisions in the heat of the general election campaign, the overall goals, parameters, and oversight must be in the hands of the SDEC to ensure democratization and accountability. The Perez-Criss proposal will do this.
Adopting this proposal is the way to make sure that the aspirations of grassroots Democrats, for a fighting Democratic Party that fights to carry our state for our whole ticket in '08 and beyond, with a winners' attitude of confidence, pride, and fighting spirit, will lead the way for the Texas Democratic Party. This is the way to take the process out of the hands of minimalist, defeatist, unaccountable insider consultants and advisors. With the greatest of appreciation for SDEC members Perez and Criss, their proposal will greatly advance us on the path toward reclaiming our heritage as a strong, populist party in the tradition of Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt, and Johnson, a party that means what it says and says what it means, a party that will fight to bring relief from robber baron corporate government to all the people of Texas in every part of Texas.
The Perez-Criss proposal will be considered at the April quarterly SDEC meeting. Please urge your two SDEC representatives (one male and one female from your Texas Senate District) to support this vital proposal. The Texas Democratic Party website lists all the SDEC members by Senate District, with contact information.
So far nobody has taken me up on my challenge to the Insiders to a debate over these issues. Come on out and debate me publicly. Don't content yourself with taking pot shots at me from behind blogger pseudonyms. Let's do it in public, in a format where we can challenge each other's assertions and question each other on the spot, in the open. Who will stand and debate me?
My report of the recent meeting between five of the 2006 statewide Democratic candidates and Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie
posted by snarko on February 1 2007
PART THREE OF FOUR
Maria Louisa Alvarado distributed a written statement, in which she addressed the need to reach outside the conventional voter base and motivate voters who have not been participating in the political process. Restoring trust in the political process for people who have either lost confidence or never had confidence in voting was a strong and eloquent campaign theme for Maria Louisa throughout 2006. Her written statement, which she summarized orally to Boyd, reflected her strong vision about expanding participation in government and politics. Throughout the 2006 campaign the TDP inexcusably treated Maria Louisa virtually as if she were invisible, but her vision and passion for democratic government belonging to all the people are powerful, and I personally urge all readers here to pay her much closer attention.
Barbara Radnofsky pressed Boyd for a commitment that the party would put on a serious campaign to carry Texas for the whole ticket in 2008. She asked, "Is a coordinated campaign being planned for 2008?" In response she was told that it depends on what you mean by coordinated campaign. She was also told something along the lines of, "it depends on what we're able to do."
The itemized list of what Barbara called "commitments" in her newsletter were ideas that Barbara proposed in the meeting. With due respect for Barbara, I did not hear commitments to any of them. What I heard were vague comments no stronger than that they sounded like ideas that might be worth considering.
The biggest shortcoming of the meeting structure was there was very little opportunity for follow-up questions or comments to specific assertions and specific questions. The primary response to the candidates' statements that TDP did not seriously promote the statewide ticket was to argue that to the contrary the party did support the statewide ticket to the best of its ability. There was virtually zero response of substance to the criticisms that the TDP did not seriously utilize its public communications abilities to promote the ticket and to counteract the defeatism of the major media. At one point I said to Boyd, "the insider targeting has to stop."
The primary responses to this statement and to the other comments made about the exclusionary targeting by unelected insiders and consultants were either to avoid the issue or to deny the facts.
Boyd Richie is a genuinely congenial, likeable man. I have known him for a number of years. I personally enjoy his company and his conversation. But the Democratic Party is not a social club and the issues facing our fellow Texans and Americans are too serious to withhold truth for fear of hurting feelings. Whenever I heard Boyd give public speeches at rallies during the campaign year, when I was present, he said good words about supporting the statewide nominees. I acknowledged this to him in the meeting. But as I told him, the state party's actions did not match his words.
At one point in the meeting I told him, "Boyd, the elected party chair and SDEC need to be in charge of the process." Boyd is the elected party chairman, democratically chosen by the delegates at the last convention. He is a member of the SDEC, as its presiding officer. As a matter of position and structure he carries applicable authority and responsibility, and is accountable to the party rank and file and the SDEC.
The SDEC is the democratically elected governing body, whose members are elected at the Conventions, are responsible for conducting the affairs of the party between Conventions, and are accountable to the Convention delegates and to all rank and file Democrats. I strongly believe, however, that unelected consultants, advisors, donors, and staffers are collectively usurping the roles and authority of the elected party chairman and SDEC members, with the acquiescence of top party officers. It is the best of all possible worlds for avoiding accountability, because it is virtually impossible for the SDEC members, Convention delegates, and grassroots members of the Democratic Party to hold shadowy unelected insiders accountable, especially when the elected party leaders protect the insiders' roles by denying their existence. (I'm sure I must not be the only one to notice that after elections the insider consultants et al. tend to rush out into the open quickly to take credit for successes, but when it comes to examining losses they do not exactly line up to assume responsibility.)
This undemocratic and un-Democratic dynamic did not originate with Boyd Richie's chairmanship. It has been going on for a long time. Personally I have spoken against it repeatedly and publicly for a number of years. So have many others. Regardless of when it started, we have got to get rid of this mindset that generates practices and customs that tell the general public our party is a private clique. It has to stop. It has to stop now. Tomorrow is not soon enough.
Near the end of the meeting I volunteered to help the Party by trying to recruit county chairs in counties that presently do not have Democratic County Chairs. (To the best of my knowledge there are eight: Armstrong, Cottle, Crockett, Culberson, Hansford, Ochiltree, Roberts, and Terrell Counties.)
I intend to apply my best efforts to do so.
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