I would like to thank the
Students Association, the faculty, and the Administration for
thinking about me and inviting me to be here this afternoon with you as
we celebrate Women's History Month.
It is appropriate to think about the
status of women here at home
and around the world because we also just celebrated
International Women's Day. Of
course, as a Black woman, I'm committed to improving the
status of both women and Blacks.
The theme of this year's Women's History Month Symposium is “Women Redefining the
Politics of Power.”
I believe that we should also investigate the extent
to which “The Powers That Be,” that is,
“Power” with a capital “P” has redefined women's
politics - to the detriment
of women. So I have entitled my speech,
“Is Power Redefining
the Politics of
Women?” I believe we should also ask the
same question with respect to African-Americans.
Here's why:
It was my father who literally pulled me into the
political arena and taught me its power.
You see, I saw, in my life, a direct benefit from the
kind of political action that presses a specific
demand. We were not involved just to be active - we were involved with
a purpose, to make a difference. Of course there
were men and women who were involved because they sought adulation from others
and politics was a way to get that, but it was important
for me, and those around me, to be able to distinguish the
sincere candidates of change from the
sycophants. It was important that candidates and incumbents alike, voters
and constituents, be the ones pressing the
system at all times, with nothing in mind but our interests, therefore
making a difference for all of us. We felt that
anyone holding an official position, not pressing for our interests, was
not working on behalf of the community. We were trying to redefine
the politics of power.
My story starts with my father who was arrested in his Army uniform, still
on the train coming home from Europe,
and when that train stopped, he went into the station
to taste that white water. He drank from the white
water fountain, still in his U.S. Army uniform, and promptly got arrested.
That was my father's welcome back to the United States
after serving his country to make the world safe
for democracy.
Shortly after that, my father became one of Atlanta's first Black police
officers. He couldn't arrest Whites even when they were in the midst of committing a crime; the Black officers would have to call a White officer to make
the arrest; there were certain parts of
town the Black officers couldn't venture into; and
they couldn't even change into and out of their
uniforms inside the Atlanta Police headquarters.
They would have to trek down the street and around
the corner to the Black YMCA.
So my father would protest all of this, in his uniform, most times alone, because the other Blacks were too afraid to join him. For 20 years, while
he was a policeman, my father watched as others received promotions based
on whatever the indignity was that he protested.
From my father's experience, I learned service without expectation of
reward.
And then one day, my father decided that it was insufficient to protest
public policy, one ought to make public policy. So, he ran for office:
two times he ran, and two times he lost. Because both times he ran were
before the Voting Rights Act was law.
But then in August of 1965, after Lyndon Johnson
signed the Voting Rights Act into law, things changed for Black people
across the South - things changed for our country.
From the film American Blackout, you get a bit of this history and the story of what happened to me - twice - and how the
Black vote was systematically disfranchised, not only in my elections
by the use of crossover voting, but also in
our last two Presidential elections by various Republican schemes uncontested
by the Democrats.
The Voting Rights Act mandated that election laws
and certain practices prevalent in the South change
or be discontinued. With the elimination of
those practices, backed by the strong arm of
the federal government and the
Courts, the landscape changed in Georgia and my father ran for office
and won.
That was an interest, in this case, Black people, redefining
the politics of
Power (with a capital P).
With his position in the Legislature, my father
could use the power of
his position to inject his values into the system
and make the system respond. He immediately, then,
filed a lawsuit against the State of
Georgia for its discriminatory hiring practices, won that lawsuit, and
the State of Georgia was under a court decree
on hiring until my father's ouster from the Georgia
Legislature by the same forces and methods that
targeted and ousted me in 2002.
I wanted you to have this background so you can understand why I believe
that the political process, even as imperfect as it is
today, can do powerful things to help people and change circumstances.
Why I believe that we can use the tool of
our vote to obtain from the political system what
we need to be free, to be treated equally, to find justice, and to live
in peace. Frederick Douglass told us that power
concedes nothing without a demand. It is clear that
the political system can deliver, but we need to
be clear on what is the demand.
According to United for a Fair Economy, racial disparities in 2004 were
in some cases worse then than at the time of
the murder of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. - that on homeownership, without public policy intervention,
it would take 1,664 years to close the racial gap
in home ownership in our country.
In 2005, United for a Fair Economy explored the
disparate impact of Bush's “Ownership Society” economic
program that saw Black and Latino lives shattered as employment, income,
home ownership, business ownership, and stock ownership plummeted.
In 2006, United for a Fair Economy focused on the
devastating and embarrassing effect of government
inaction before, during, and after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They focused
on car ownership and the relationship between vehicle
ownership and race. In the case of
New Orleans, car ownership
literally meant the difference between losing or
saving one's life.
In 2007, United for a Fair Economy explored Black voters' attachment to
the Democratic Party, and in a piece titled, “Voting Blue, but
Staying in the Red,” they explored goals that the Democratic Party should have put at the
top of its agenda for its first 100 hours in the majority. While noting that the Democrats
didn't even mention Katrina in their agenda, United for a Fair Economy
concluded that Blacks and Latinos voted in the November
2006 elections in the blue, but due to a failure
of public policy to pay attention to their needs,
they continue to live in the red.
In United for a Fair Economy's 2008 report, they explore the
sub-prime mortgage crisis and note that the largest
loss of wealth in U.S. history is being experienced
by the Black and Latino communities with an estimated
$92 billion being lost by Blacks and an estimated $98 billion being lost
by Latinos. And while families who are losing their life savings and their
only major investment, policy makers are asking them to tighten their
belts. But the banks' CEOs are walking away with
record remuneration.
Sadly, United for a Fair Economy isn't the only
research organization to find glaring and intolerable disparities by race
in our society with no appropriate public policies enacted to address
them. Hull House did a study that found that it would take 200 years to
close the gap in the quality
of life experienced by Black Chicagoans and white
Chicagoans. There has been no public policy initiative taken up by the
mayor or the governor of Illinois to begin closing that gap.
Several years ago, the New York Times published a finding that nearly half the
men between the ages of 16
and 64 in New York City
were unemployed. There was no initiative by the
mayor or the governor of New York to begin addressing such pain.
Every year, the National Urban League publishes
a study, “The State of Black America,” in which the ills and disparities that persist in this country are catalogued.
Every year, the story is basically
the same. Only public policy can address these glaring
disparities.
Pressing the system with a public policy demand
constitutes an interest redefining the
politics of Power.
That's power with a capital P. Now, that same Power likes to use politics to advance its
own, not others' interests.
Now, what I've learned is that the
rich folks of this country (Power
with a capital P) know what government can do and they know how to press
a demand in their interest. That's why they've got lobbyists pumping hundreds
of millions of dollars into the political system so the corporations
and individuals they represent can get what they want.
That's what the Jena 6 District Attorney meant when
he went to the high school and announced to the
students that with the stroke of
a pen he could ruin their lives. He could use the
power of his position, the
power of politics,
to impose his values on the community at large.
It is to wield and influence the
power of position and the
power over the public purse,
the power over public policy, that we engage
the political system. Not merely to hold positions.
Dr. King said that the Negro in Mississippi must be able to vote, but the
Negro in New York
had to have something for which to vote. The power to make public policy in our interest is
that “something for which” we vote.
The statistics reflecting life for Blacks in the United
States cited in repeated studies reflect,
in my opinion, a dismal failure to translate our votes into an agenda
that eliminates disparities and presses our interests. As United for a
Fair Economy concluded, Blacks vote in the blue,
but stay in the red. That I maintain, is politically
dysfunctional.
Please understand that a three trillion dollar federal budget and 51,
including the District of
Columbia, multi-billion dollar state budgets, and thousands of
multi-million dollar county, school board, and city budgets hold the possibility of doing a tremendous amount
of good; however we are now seeing that a lot of bad can be done when that kind of money
and power are put in the hands
of those who are not well intentioned, or to those
who are easily swayed off course by proximity to power
and wealth.
”All that is necessary for the
triumph of evil is that good
men do nothing”. I was not raised in a family where doing nothing was
an option.
So, I participated in protests with my father, to get the
Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts passed;
I faced an armed Alabama Klan with my father; and I eventually ran for
office as a part of my father's vision - it surely
was nothing I was too much interested in doing. I was content to support
good candidates.
But, the '60s and '70s, despite the
challenges, were heady times for the movement because
my father's generation identified a problem, fashioned a solution, implemented
that solution, benefited from their sacrifices, and then relied on succeeding
generations to continue pushing the Movement forward.
And move forward our country did.
The women's movement, the gay liberation movement, the American
Indian Movement, Puerto Rican independence, Chicano pride, and a powerful
antiwar movement formed a synergism that propelled success on many different
fronts - but also set the stage for the
setbacks that were to come from Power's reaction.
And that is Power with a capital P.
While the American patchwork of
humanity was being stitched together for real change in our country, the government didn't sit still. Its response was COINTELPRO,
the Counter-Intelligence Program, a program whose mission it was,
in the words of the FBI, “to misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” Black
leadership in this country. I would posit to you that we, the
keepers of the flame in my
generation, failed to fashion a response to the
concerted and largely successful COINTELPRO attacks on authentic leadership
that surfaced as a result of our struggles.
This official, government-led attack on communities' authentic leadership
is chronicled in Ward Churchill's book, The
COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent
in the United States (South End Press Classics Series).
There, we see that in 1918, J. Edgar Hoover was concerned that Marcus
Garvey, “excites the Negroes.” The story of
the government's interest in this authentic community
leadership is available on the
internet and should be understood to extend to today's cultural icons,
hip hop artists, community activists, and even pro-peace and environmental
leaders.
But, in 1965, a document stamped by the CIA, described
what I call regime change on Black America. It said somewhere at the top there must be a Negro who is clean
who can step into the vacuum and chaos once Dr.
King is either exposed or assassinated.
This memo described exactly what I saw taking place in Georgia while I was in the
Legislature and the issue was who was going to go
to Congress from Georgia's
new Black-opportunity district. The Speaker of Georgia's House and the Governor of my state got together and decided who the
next Black Congressperson was going to be before the
people in the new district even had had the
chance cast one vote.
That's when I decided to run - because I saw how the
Democratic leadership of my state intended to trick
Black people in Georgia's
new, but poor and rural Black belt Congressional district. Voters would
invest their dreams and precious votes, in a candidate who, unbeknownst
to them, had already been pre-selected to protect the
status quo and not them - the voters. This was Power's
response to my agitation from the Legislature to
get more Blacks from Georgia
into the U.S. Congress.
I witnessed this and pulled the plug on it. That's
how I became a Member of Congress from Georgia. I had the
temerity to think the people should have a representative,
too, and the people agreed.
(Parenthetically, I agitated with other civil rights leaders in the
state for more Black judges, too. And the beneficiary
of that agitation then turned around and ran against me in the 2002 election, going to Congress, voted into office by Black
voters, but only after having been pre-selected by the
White Power structure in my state.)
So, an immediate challenge was to understand the
scope of the problem associated with true representation.
I had to learn the truth before I could fashion
a public policy intervention that the numbers cry
out for. And that's what I've done throughout my political career - focus
on the issues and the appropriate public policy
intervention necessary to make ours a more just and peaceful country.
That meant, at times, also telling some inconvenient truths. However,
telling those truths comes from my observations and experiences inside
the world of politics.
Now, would my experiences lead me to believe that the
need for civil rights is over?
The answer is an emphatic
no.
But I would quickly posit that Power wants you to
believe that the need for civil rights is
over. Power doesn't want you to think about pressing
a demand for a group of people, Power
only wants you to press a demand for your single Black self. Power
wants the freedom to go about satisfying its interests
and wants you to redefine what your interests are.
I would suggest that statistics like those in the
reports of United for a Fair Economy are a reflection
of what happens when civil rights are no longer vigorously pursued.
Statistics like those can only occur when everybody in charge of the shop goes home and leaves the shop untended. Or rather, when public policy interventions
are not sought to resolve communities' problems.
So now, let me turn to women.
The United Nations informs us that women
have not achieved equality with men in any country; that most of
the world's poor are women;
roughly 50% of women experience
some form of domestic violence; and the use of rape as a weapon of war is becoming more evident.
It is the struggle of
women for equal treatment in the
political life of our country that has motivated
women to become candidates for office. Did you know that even
before women had the right
to vote, women ran for President of
this country? Between 1964 and 2004 there have been 50 women
on at least one state ballot in November for President of
the United
States. But not until 1972 and the run of the unbought
and unbossed Shirley Chisholm did women candidates
do well. Chisholm got over 400,000 votes - at that time a record - and
sent 151 delegates to the Democratic Convention.
The only woman to ever appear on the
ballot in all 50 states plus D.C. was Dr. Lenora Fulani in 1988. In 1987,
Congresswoman Pat Schroeder formed an exploratory committee, but declined
to run after not being able to raise enough money. It was at this press
conference that she cried and the media derision
of women candidates truly
began. However, by 2006, in an LA Times/Bloomberg poll, only 4% of registered voters said that they would not vote for a woman
presidential candidate.
While this is certainly progress, it is
public policy progress that ought to motivate our political activism and
provide a measure of our effectiveness.
So for example, women are present and achieving
influence in politics and in the
labor force; but even today, with a woman Speaker of
the House and a woman running for President, women
still earn less for the same work than men.
Even worse, when a woman runs for office, I've noticed something terrible
about the reportage.
At first, the press pays real close attention to
the clothes - even the choice of colors is newsworthy. Then there is the issue of wearing
a dress or pants. Then there is the
cleavage issue - how much is too much.
I went to Catholic schools and so I cover up. But even that's not acceptable:
I receive messages that I wear too many clothes!
What kind of accessories adorn the
outfit is even worthy of a
mention. And don't wear the wrong shoes! Remember
the recent photo with the
question, “Is America ready to watch a woman age?”
I remember having a conversation with a former Black woman U.S. Senator
who lamented that the situation was even worse for
Black women because we're either the “mammy,”
or “Sapphire,” or the jezebel. And that because
of pre-conceived ideas held largely by White men about Black women, and those images are played out on television every day,
you'll almost never read adjectives like “bold,” “sassy,” “intelligent,”
used to describe Black political women because those
aren't the characterizations of Black women in popular and historical culture.
Keeping women inside the confines
of a pre-determined box could become a politically useful tool.
The authors of "Rebuilding
America's Defenses," the Project for a New
American Century, wrote that genotypically specific bioweapons could become
a politically useful tool. And given the facts of MK-Ultra, the Tuskegee Experiment, and
COINTELPRO, I have my senses finely honed to detect politically useful
tools in use by people who don't want freedom, peace, equality, and justice
for the rest of us.
Professor June Scorza Terpstra wrote an article titled, “Hollow Women of the Hegemon,”
found at http://carolynbaker.net.
Professor Terpstra's theme is that more and more
of what we are seeing in politics today
are women who represent the
Hegemon, rather than women who follow the
traditional role of political women
which used to be to challenge the Hegemon, or as
I've used it earlier, Power with a capital P. According
to Terpstra, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice represent examples
of this. And, remember, it is far easier
to get positive press when you are or can be of
service to the Hegemon than when you're challenging
it.
Dr. Terpstra reaches back to the writings of
Franz Fanon to remind us that the real tragedy is the extent to which powerful women now do the bidding of
the global masters. It is
this distinction that we must remember and constantly ask ourselves when
we see candidates. The Hegemon, has responded to
our successes, and as Terpstra informs us, is now
about the business of using
women to carry out tasks that serve its interests.
Terpstra forces us to recognize that it's no longer the
way it used to be: that voters could have confidence that women
were in politics not to advance their own oppression.
You could somewhat be sure that a woman elected to office was there to
advance the collective interests of
women.
Terpstra concludes that we, who are standing with the
oppressed and for liberation, need new rules, strategies and tactics to
deal with the dangerous realities of
a new gender and color-blind imperialism.
So, now we know: clean Negroes as described in that CIA document, and
“Hollow Women” are politically useful tools of the Hegemon. They are the example, not of women and Blacks defining power, but of Power
(capital P) redefining the
politics of Blacks and women.
Hence, the name of my remarks
to you this afternoon.
Now, if Terpstra is correct and we are entering
a new gender and color-blind imperialism, what are we to do about it?
I think the solution lies in us never veering from
our goals - to keep our eyes on the prize. And the prize is a public policy result.
We vote to have power over public policy, power
over the use of the
public purse. We vote for the agenda and platform
that will move our interests forward. Politics is
the authoritative allocation of
values in a society and we want public resources directed to our values.
I want to subsidize education so you're not a hundred thousand dollars
in debt just because you want to get an education!
I want a single payer health care system so Americans can stop spending
so much and getting so little!
Don't show me wrinkles on a woman's face, tell me what you're going to
do to protect Social Security so our parents and so we can age with dignity!
I do believe it is possible to have this discussion
if we demand it. And we can have authentic representation, too, if we
demand it.
Therefore, I'm working with a nation-wide group of
displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors and their supporters from the
Black-nationalist, labor, and environmental communities who are prepared
to wage a different kind of action in what is
now a different kind of struggle.
While the nature of the
struggle has definitely changed, our objectives have not. We must never
forget that Dr. King was murdered just as he was about to launch the
Poor People's Campaign, to demand economic justice as well as peace and
political justice. The notion being put forward
by some in the corporate press that today somehow
marks the end of the need
for civil rights is, as George Carlin said, the part of the American
dream you believe only when you're asleep.
The Hegemon is counting on
you to fall asleep. And my mother tells me often that this world isn't
going to change unless women change it. But the
change agents will not be the women
of the Hegemon. So, stay alert.
The people of our country need you.
Thank you.
Former Democrat and US
House Representative from the State of Georgia,
Cynthia McKinney is a member of the Green Party, running for the office
of President of the United
States. Her candidacy has also been endorsed
by the Reconstruction Party. You may obtain more information at her official
website. Additionally,
Cynthia McKinney is the author of Ain't Nothin' Like
Freedom.
Click
here to contact Ms. McKinney.
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