E-Mailbox Issue 13

I read your website with interest as often as I can. While I do not always agree with what you say, sometimes you hit the nail on the head…. We [black folks] cannot continue to allow any one group, whether it is the Democratic Leadership Council, Republicans, or even the Congressional Black Caucus, to continue to take our people for granted. We should strive to make our candidates more politically independent, and the only way to do this by financing our own candidates. Surely, we see that money is the key to every election by now. Why is it that millions of us will gladly go out and purchase $100-200 gym shoes for our children, but we will not give a single dollar to support the campaigns of our own black political candidates….

Having gotten that out of the way, I do take issue with your characterization of the race in Alabama’s 7th Congressional District. In a previous letter, I shared with you the numerous reasons why the majority of people in Mr. Hilliard’s district voted against him. I think that you are being too kind to the sorry legacy of a man who served in Congress for 5 terms, from a district with massive economic and health problems. (Incidentally, the problems were identified to Mr. Hilliard before assuming the Congressional Office ten years ago).

Audra Robinson is a doctor in Birmingham. He has touched directly on a huge problem, one that will plague progressives so long as Trojan Horse candidates are thrust upon the Black electorate. It is inevitable that, in calling attention to the Hard Right’s New Black Strategy, we will seem to be singing the praises of the individual politicians who are targeted. We will be charged with mounting a knee-jerk defense of incumbents and, when the Right decides to field relatively young surrogates, as it did in Alabama and Newark, New Jersey, we will be indicted for attempting to strangle the aspirations of youth.

We did not choose the congressional districts and cities in which the enemy has mounted his attacks; but we must resist them. Is it Dr. Robinson’s position that the only way that Arthur Davis could defeat Congressman Hilliard was to collude with Black people’s enemies? Davis makes no excuses for taking the devil’s dollars, and the good doctor should not provide him with any.

If electoral necessity justifies treason, then every potential challenger of every incumbent Black politician can make the same argument, as they line up at the Hard Right’s door, hands outstretched.

is, of course, in principled agreement with the creation of independent Black campaign finance mechanisms. However, the Right’s pockets are virtually bottomless; we can never match them dollar for dollar. In the end, only an organized and aware people can stand up to the power of money.

Caesar Howell writes about “slow-footed Black Congressional Representatives.”