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National Black Voter Day

BET and its partners launched #ReclaimYourVote, a voter education and voter mobilization campaign:

This year-long, nonpartisan campaign -- #ReclaimYourVote -- will galvanize our community by educating, engaging and empowering action. BET will execute a high-energy campaign that lays out the biggest issues, breaks down otherwise confusing processes and highlights specific ways we can reclaim our collective power.

To register to vote, check your registration, locate your polling place, or information about vote by mail or early voting options in your state, visit vote.org.

As of this writing, Election Day is 51 days away. Get ready, y’all.

Pennsylvania National Action Network Calls on Sen. Warren to Support Removal of Frank Rizzo Monument

When I moved to Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo, a former mayor and police commissioner, had been dead for nearly two decades. Still, Philadelphians spoke about him with a passion and anger that was visceral. Rizzo’s legacy includes the untreated trauma that he inflicted on the African American community.

As I researched Philadelphia’s jazz history, I heard stories about how Rizzo harassed jazz musicians and club owners. So it is shocking that a monument of a man who was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for a pattern of police brutality that “shocks the conscience” is at the gateway to municipal services.

I looked at the story behind the story and learned the Rizzo monument was financed by his family. The public was never asked whether the vanity project was an appropriate monument for the City of Philadelphia. Not only was the public not asked, the vanity project was unveiled on January 1, 1999 after the Mummers Parade, an event that for decades featured marchers in blackface.

On the day Mayor Jim Kenney announced his endorsement of Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic presidential nomination, it was reported Kenney has no plan to remove the Rizzo monument from Thomas Paine Plaza. Warren supports removal of Confederate monuments and the Confederate battle emblem from the Mississippi state flag.

I join Pennsylvania State Chapter National Action Network in calling on Warren to support removal of the monument of Frank Rizzo, a racist cop who trampled on civil rights, urged supporters to “vote white” and traumatized the African American community. You can read the press release here.

Joe Biden’s Great American Novel

On Saturday, Joe Biden kicked off his third presidential campaign. Biden said he chose Philadelphia for his campaign launch and headquarters because “this was the birthplace of our democracy”:

So why do we begin this journey in this place – Philadelphia? Because this was the birthplace of our democracy. It was here that two of the most important documents in the world’s history were written.

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Those words formed the American creed. Equality. Equity. Fairness. America didn’t live up to that promise for most of its people, for people of color, for women.

It is self-evident blacks were not included in the nation’s founding documents. The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner. Biden said, “Just look at the facts, not the alternative facts.” Fact is, African Americans were stripped of their humanity and deemed the property of “We the people.” Chattel slavery was not a broken promise. It was foundational to the nation’s economy and political representation.

In 1787, slaveholders and their sympathizers were holed up in Independence Hall fixing the Constitution to preserve African Americans as their property. Slavery is enshrined in the third clause of Article IV, Section 2:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

At the same time, others were fighting to end slavery.

Biden’s campaign kickoff was held on the anniversary of Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of segregated public accommodations if they were “separate but equal.”

The Jim Crow regime was not dismantled until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Biden’s assertion about “One America” begs the question: When have we ever been “One America?”

Fact is, Biden’s revisionist history is not novel. Brushing aside slavery, America’s original sin, is the “American creed.” As the nation commemorates 400 years of African American history, we must continue to fight to ensure our story is told and preserved in public memory. Does that make us angry? Novelist and cultural critic James Baldwin observed:

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time.

Stay woke.

Mississippi, Goddam

On Tuesday, Mississippi voters will go to the polls and choose between Michael Espy, a black man, and Cindy Hyde-Smith, a white woman who said she would welcome an invitation to “a public hanging.”

More African Americans were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state.

Hyde-Smith said she was just “joking.” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said lynching is no joking matter:

Hyde-Smith’s decision to joke about “hanging,” in a state known for its violent and terroristic history toward African Americans is sick. To envision this brutal and degenerate type of frame during a time when Black people, Jewish People, and immigrants are still being targeted for violence by White nationalists and racists is hateful and hurtful. Any politician seeking to serve as the national voice of the people of Mississippi should know better. Her choice of words serves as an indictment of not only her lack of judgment, but her lack of empathy, and most of all lack of character.

When the votes are counted, the joke may be on the Confederate cap-wearing segregationist.

Charlottesville: One Year Later

In the year since the deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, there has been a growing awareness that public art is about public memory. It matters whose story is told in public spaces. From Maryland to Texas, Confederate monuments have been taken down. It took Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh three days to send the Confederate monuments in “Charm City” packing.

Conversations about public memory and symbols of hate were also held “Up South.” The Pittsburgh Art Commission voted to remove the monument to Stephen Foster, the “Father of American Music,” who is memorialized with a barefoot slave seated at his feet.

A task force appointed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the removal of the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims, who operated on enslaved African American women to develop advances in gynecological surgery.

In Philadelphia, calls grew louder for Mayor Jim Kenney to remove the monument memorializing Frank Rizzo, a former mayor. As police commissioner, Rizzo presided over a police department whose practice of beatings “shocks the conscience.” That was the finding of the U.S. Justice Department which, in 1979, filed an unprecedented civil lawsuit against the city over its abusive policing tactics.

On the eve of the first anniversary of Charlottesville, Kenney did an about-face and said the Rizzo monument would stay at the gateway to municipal services for at least two to three years. The Mayor claims he is concerned about “incurring additional costs” of $200,000 $100,000. Truth be told, the police department will likely spend at least $100,000 quarterly protecting a monument to police brutality, racial bigotry and misogyny.

But get this: Kenney presides over a city government that spent $5 million on a computer system and has nothing to show for it. Also, City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart recently reported the city cannot account for a whopping $33 million in taxpayers’ money.

The Philadelphia Inquirer called out Kenney on his flip-flop:

Mayor Kenney has taken pains to publicly underscore the value of our city as welcoming and diverse. That’s a message undercut by the delay in moving the controversial statue that for some stands for oppression. That it was confirmed so near the anniversary of Charlottesville is sadly tone-deaf — especially at a time when better listening is critical.

Meanwhile, Frank Rizzo Jr. said that if his father’s statue is removed, “there’s going to be a fight.” Listen up, Junior: It's on.

#IStandWithMaxine

Black women have had enough of President Trump’s racist attacks on Congresswoman Maxine Waters and veiled threat.

They’re also dismayed that Democratic leaders failed to publicly defend Waters. On July 3, black women leaders and allies from across the country sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (full disclosure: I am a signatory to this letter):

Further, we write to share our profound indignation and deep disappointment over your recent failure to protect Congresswoman Waters from unwarranted attacks from the Trump Administration and others in the GOP. That failure was further compounded by your decision to unfairly deride her as being “uncivil” and “un-American.” In doing so, we believe this mischaracterizes her call to action for peaceful democratic assembly and the exercise of her constitutional rights to free speech in support of defenseless immigrant children and their families.

As one of the longest serving African American women, and the longest tenured woman of color, in Congress, Representative Waters has dedicated nearly 30 years of her life to federal public service. Prior to that, she was a member of the California State Assembly for 14 years, and has made it her life’s work to stand as a fearless advocate for women and unwavering champion for children, people of color and the poor.

Black women told the congressional leadership that if they don’t respect us, don’t expect us:

Much hangs in the balance this fall, with all 435 House seats and 33 Senate seats up for grabs. Disparaging or failing to support Congresswoman Waters is an affront to her and Black women across the country and telegraphs a message that the Democratic Party can ill afford: that it does not respect Black women’s leadership and political power and discounts the impact of Black women and millennial voters.

The letter is available here.

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch, a conservative watch attack dog group, has filed an ethics complaint. President Tom Fitton said Waters should be “disavowed.”

Republican Congressman Andy Biggs (Arizona) has introduced a resolution to “censure and condemn” Waters. The House could consider the measure this week.

If you are outraged by this blatant attempt to silence a black woman whose back does not bend, call (202) 224-3121 and tell your representative: I stand with Maxine.

And Still Black Women Rise: Power Rising Summit

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets for the second Women's March.

White women came out in droves. But when push comes to shove, race trumps gender. It's worth remembering that 52 percent of white women voted for Trump.

In the Alabama senate election, 57 percent of white women voted for alleged sexual predator Roy Moore. By contrast, black women overwhelmingly supported Doug Jones.

African Americans in Alabama voted to save themselves. In so doing, they powered the Democratic candidate to victory in the heart of Dixie. Black women are flexing their power and organizing Power Rising Summit:

Black women of all backgrounds, experience, and expression will gather for Power Rising: Building an Agenda for Black Women, an historic summit that will build an actionable agenda that leverages our individual and collective power and influence for the advancement of ourselves, our families, our communities and our future.

The Summit will be organized around five key pillars of activism and engagement: Business & Economic Empowerment; Culture, Community, and Society; Education, Technology, and Innovation; Health & Wellness; and Political Empowerment. Not since the Combahee River Collective statement was written some 40 years ago have Black women gathered to create an agenda that explicitly addresses the unique intersectionality of Black women.

Power Rising 2018 will be held February 23-25 in Atlanta, Ga. For information on how to register to attend the summit, visit www.powerrising.org.