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Last week's BC cover
story unmasked Atlanta's Kasim Reed, a part-time Democrat
and black state senator and a full time corporate attorney
with an anti-civil rights and pro-employment discrimination
practice, and generated quite a bit of reader email.
There was this comment from Mr. Albert Murphy:
Thanks for your superb article on Kasim
Reed, and your trenchant verdicts on the “black” magazines.
It is indeed gratifying to know that people like yourself
still exist in this country,
in these times. Keep 'em coming!
We received this note from Richard Clement:
Haul them out and call them out! These
types need to be exposed for what they are doing to the
black community's
general well being. Thanks to the legal hijinks of this clown
more black professionals are out of work and struggling. Senator
Reed is a prime example of "The Black to hold others
back."
I would hope that you would add a "Negro/Sambo Hall of Shame" web
page placed on your website for easy reference.
Monte Watson of Atlanta had this to say
about Reed’s anti-immigrant
activities:
I would just like to
thank you for the article regarding Kasim Reed. I found it
most enlightening and true
to the power. I fear and know that the lack of education
on this subject by our people and continued perpetrations by
people like Mr. Reed and his owners will only achieve massa's
goal of dividing the brown and black when we have a huge opportunity
to join forces!
And Clemmie Freize wrote:
I am proud of you for
how you presented the context behind Kasim Reed, his actions,
and how they affect
the real progress that is so desperately needed by Black People. Thanks
for helping to reduce the media manipulation we are subjected
to on a daily basis. Keep this up and you may give journalism
a good name.
African Americans are not the least bit
in doubt about where they stand on most important issues. Every time our people
have been polled on the subject our communities have overwhelmingly
favored not just raising the minimum wage, but instituting
a living wage. The vast majority of black voters favor
repealing right-to-work
laws wherever these exist and guaranteeing everybody the
right to join unions and strike. And of course we lopsidedly
favor tightening the enforcement of civil rights laws against
employers who discriminate on the basis of age, sex and race.
How then, do we explain the political career of Atlanta's Kasim
Reed, an anti-civil rights civil rights lawyer, an attorney
who actually fights
for the right of employers to hire, fire, promote and discriminate on the
basis of sex, age and race? Why? Black voters in his Atlanta
district are no different on the issues from black voters anyplace else,
and they certainly aren't stupid either.
Kasim Reed owes his political career to the absence of anything
like news coverage of and for black communities. The
mainstream broadcast and print media simply do not provide
the steady stream of relevant facts,
local and global, that citizens need.
The surviving vestiges of the black press
don't do it either. A
quick survey of the day's top news stories on the web site
of the Atlanta
Daily World, the city's black newspaper, graphically tells
the tale.
"Spelman College Celebrates Anniversary – This
125-year legacy will be celebrated from April 1-11 with a series
of programs, including "An Evening with Donnie McClurkin,"
"'ATL' Stars Walk Red Carpet At Premiere...Celebrities arrive for the Atlanta
premiere of the movie ‘ATL’..."
"Gee's Bend Quilts Arrive – ‘The Quilts of Gee's Bend’ celebrates the artistic
legacy of several generations of women..."
”70th Annual Atlanta Dogwood Festival Marks Arrival Of Spring In The City.”
”Lt. Governor Mark Taylor Warmly Embraced by Who's Who Group of Men.” – The dinner
guests amounted to a consortium of the Black community's heavy-hitters
”60 In The World With...Ludacris.”
”McKinney Case Goes to Federal Prosecutor” – An Associated Press story, not from
local reporters although McKinney represents Atlanta.
”Gen. Russel Honore and John Hope Franklin Honored by Black Press” – This is
from the news wire of the NNPA.
”Southeast Region NAACP Honors Sutton, Bryant & Alpha Phi Alpha.”
Two entertainment stories, a local festival,
five celebrations including one of a quilt, and another of
a white guy running
for governor, and the McKinney wire service story. This
is the black press in a metro area with one million African
Americans, vigilantly monitoring the centers of power to let
us know what's going on. Right.
 On the other hand, it took BC a single glance at Reed's
email address and less than ten minutes of Googling to discover the outlines
of Reed's anti-civil rights law practice, and to understand how it fit
into the broader patterns of union busting and corporate influence peddling
on the part of his transnational law firm of Holland & Knight. In
another five minutes we found evidence that the very law firm in which
Reed, an elected Georgia Democrat, is a full partner advises Republicans
in Georgia, Florida and other states on the redrawing of district lines
to neutralize the black vote. If a single BC columnist
can find this out in fifteen minutes on google.com, what could a journalist backed up by the resources
of a professional news gathering operation discover in a day? Or
three days?
From Charlotte to Chicago, Black corporate stooges like Senator Reed owe
their political careers to the fact that there simply are no professional
news gathering operations covering our black communities. Phil
Donahue likes to tell the tale of how, as the 22 year old news director
of a local radio station his mere appearance at a public event stopped
the local mayor, an accomplished gentleman more than twice his age, in
his tracks. That's what journalists are supposed to do.
Reader and reporter Saleemah Rasheed gets it exactly.
I would like to commend
you on presenting your readers with factual information about
a controversial
political topic. Far too often in our country's media outlets,
journalists give their readers a glossed over, neutral piece
so as to not offend. However, as a fellow journalist,
I believe we have a duty to present the truth, despite opposition. It
is so crucial that journalists do what you have done in Black
Commentator; fully exercise their first amendment rights. Job
well done.
The profession of journalism is shrinking across the board
in print and broadcast media alike, according to Columbia University's State
of the Media 2006 report, and black communities are especially
hard hit. In the absence of news
coverage black as well as white corporate crooks masquerading
as public servants will continue to hide in plain sight. When
Reed and people like him are covered at all, especially in
the black media, it's all about roasting, boasting and toasting
the few who have "made it," until the day we begin
to demand accountability from those media.
Editor and Senior Commentator Margaret Kimberley's Freedom
Rider column is consistently the most widely read feature of BC,
and never fails to draw the informed feedback of BC readers. One
of her recent offerings was the latest installment on the looming tragedy
of Newark, New Jersey, where Cory Booker, the hand picked product of the
Manhattan Institute and the Walton Family Foundation, is trying to become
that city's mayor, to use city hall as a stepping stone for higher office,
and to cannibalize and privatize what remains of Newark's schools and public
sector. Booker's wealthy patrons even produced a film on the previous
Newark mayoral election that insults the people of that city by saying
that they rejected Booker's previous candidacy because he was light-skinned
and educated, and likened their free and fair election which Booker lost
to a kind of mugging. A “Street Fight.”
Ms. Kimberley's column generated
this response from the producer and director of the film, Marshall Curry.
I saw your most recent post about my
film “Street Fight.” I
don't mind you criticizing it – in fact the reason I made
it was to encourage debate and discussion – but rather than
taking my quote on my website out of context, why don't you
show a little integrity and link to the quote in its entirety
(even Mickey Kaus did that when he criticized the film).
You have links all over the article, and it wouldn't use
up any ink to do so. In fact, the only reason I can
imagine for you NOT linking to me is that you don't trust
your readers (or your own ideas) enough to expose them to
a different point of view.
In case you need it, the quote in question is on: www.marshallcurry.com/kaus.html
In addition, if you are ever interested in a true exchange of ideas,
I'd be happy to have an unedited dialogue with you where we each post
our ideas on our websites and link back and forth – you criticize “Street
Fight,” and I criticize your reporting on the election.
best,
Marshall
Curry received this reply from BC co-publisher
Glen Ford:
Mr. Curry:
We did read your remarks in their totality. The quote we featured was not
taken out of context. Indeed, you descend ever deeper into dishonesty with
every line that follows the quoted text. Had we decided to devote an entire
article to your propaganda film, a thorough deconstruction of your justifications
might have been in order - so you actually got off easy.
You claim that vouchers was not a "significant issue" in
the 2002 campaign. Cory Booker tried to make it no issue at
all, hiding his
pro-voucher views and activities from the electorate until he was outed
by The Black Commentator and, later, the Sharpe James campaign. The corporate
media, which universally supported Booker, collaborated in largely ignoring
the voucher question.
However, you know full well that the voucher issue was raised
by BC and
the James campaign to demonstrate Booker's intimate connections with the
Hard Right: the Bradley Foundation, the Walton Family Fund, and the Manhattan
Institute. You could not have been as close as you were to Booker's campaign
- an appendage of it, in fact - without being familiar with BC's
investigative work on this subject. During the last weeks of the campaign,
every James handout contained copies of BC articles. The
first page of Sharpe James' website urged visitors to click to the relevant BC articles.
James repeatedly charged Booker with being in league with Black folks'
worst enemies, as BC maintained.
Booker's association with vouchers and the rightwingers who
invented the Black voucher "movement" out of whole
clothe were central to Sharpe James' campaign, an issue constantly
dodged by Booker. And Sharpe
James won. That your film pretended this issue didn't exist mutilates reality,
and proves that you are nothing but a shill for Booker, acting in total
concert with his 2006 campaign, as you did in 2002.
Just in case you are tempted to claim that we at BC shilled
for Sharpe James, here's our retort in advance: We never praised Sharpe
James or his policies. Our interest in the Newark race was solely based
on the candidacy of Cory Booker, who we recognized as a Trojan Horse for
the Right's attempt to gain a foothold in a major Black city, with the
goal of turning Newark into a showcase for privatization of education and
other reactionary policies. The larger aim of this rightwing offensive
is direct subversion of Black Democratic politics in the inner cities -
a new and awesomely dangerous development.
Sharpe James didn't understand the nature of Booker's candidacy
and support, until BC explained it. The white
liberals who support Booker remain unaware of his affiliations.
But you aren't. Instead, you
conspire to hide the easily documentable truth from the public. Effectively
and objectively, you are an operative of the Right. Why would we want to
have a dialogue with an enemy operative and non-journalist? Certainly,
your film was no work of journalism, investigative or otherwise.
We don't dialogue with the enemy, we fight him.
Glen Ford, Executive Editor and Co-Publisher
BlackCommentator.com
 By now we all know the right is targeting Georgia's Rep.
Cynthia McKinney once again. BC readers are
wondering at the lack of visible support she has received from
fellow Democrats in Congress, especially members of the Black
Caucus.
Reader TC, in response to a two-part CBC
Monitor Report, by Leutisha Stills, wrote:
Read your very, very on point article in BC.
You have articulated every emotion I am feeling about the Cynthia
McKinney situation. I am a male, and I have to say the
lack of response from any high profile Black male is an embarrassment
to African American Manhood.
Thanks for writing something that looks
critically at the situation of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.
I was saddened that the members of the Black Caucus did not
support her and the white supremacists were able to dehumanize
her in the so-called mainstream media without any rebuttal
from anyone of color or even any of the so called non-black
progressives. This appears to be the 21st Century version of
dehumanizing people of African descent regardless of their
station in life. I thought that members of Congress were exempt
from arrest except for felonious or treason cases, but this
apparently applies only to its non-black members.
I am thinking seriously about dumping the Democratic party. There does
not seem to be that much difference between Dems and Reps when it comes
to black people. I may become an Independent. I seriously believe it is
time to start a party that addresses the needs of people of African descent.
BC has little to say
in defense of a Democratic party or a black caucus which
won't even defend the duly elected
representative of Georgia's 4th district. We hope to
announce the location and date of CBC Monitor's First Annual
Lawn Jockey Awards later this month.
The profession of journalism, as we have said before, is shrinking,
and with this shrinkage, the ability of black people to work
out our own thoughts
and opinions in public is critically endangered. By now you know
that BC is in desperate financial condition. The
model for self-funding Internet journalism is not well established, but
we know one thing for sure. BC depends on donations
from our readers to keep coming to you every week. If you've given
before and can afford to give again, this is the time. And if you've
never given before, this is the time to do it. So reach for that
Visa or MasterCard and do the right thing to help us stay out here.
Thank you.
Bruce A. Dixon
[email protected]
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