e-Mailbox: Black church sexually challenged and more

A new politics is taking shape in the U.S., one that will attempt to pick up where the decapitated civil rights struggle failed (and feared) to tread, more than three decades ago. This New Urban Politics “will be an essentially Black-led (and increasingly Latino-oriented) movement,” we wrote in the fourth edition of our series, “Wanted: A Plan for the Cities to Save Themselves,” on May 20. “Great social movements may be sparked by outrage,” said our Cover Story, “but they are sustained by dreams.” The New Urban Politics must challenge corporate agendas with people’s own visions for democratic development of their communities:

Dreams are what development is all about. Yet in 21st Century America, only rich men’s dreams are allowed – Thou shalt have no other dreams but mine, says capital. Black politicians have collaborated in this people-stunting politics, believing the cities in which they wield at least nominal power are worthless. Why else would they so eagerly transfer urban assets for a song, or for nothing at all, or in Wal-Mart’s case, for a job- and community-destroying monstrosity.

The new urban politics must be rooted in a development strategy that calls upon the people to imagine a city that fulfills their needs, a politics that provides them with the tools to transform their surroundings in ways that they choose, through a process that affirms the value and power of democracy – the value and power of themselves. If people can dream a city, they will fight to make it real.

Activists in Chicago fought Wal-Mart to a draw, last month. The world’s most rapacious corporation sought City Council permission to build two stores in predominantly Black neighborhoods, setting off the fiercest council debates in two decades. By the narrowest of margins, Wal-Mart was denied entrance to its proposed South Side site. “A half a loaf is better than none,” United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881 president Ron Powell told the Chicago Tribune.

Grassroots activists joined labor to demand that Wal-Mart sign a 12-point agreement governing its behavior in Chicago, a strategy employed with some success to curtail corporate developer abuses in California. Wal-Mart fought back the old-fashioned way, greasing palms and making vague promises to Black politicians eager to believe that big box retailers create jobs. In reality, Wal-Mart is a “death star” – a net jobs-destroyer, according to a study by the Center for Urban Economic Development (CUED) at the University of Illinois-Chicago:

Although the West Side Wal-Mart won City Council approval, it is clear that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based mega-retailer has become the modern equivalent of 1960s-era Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor – the despised face that symbolizes a much larger enemy. “As Connor personified centuries of racial oppression, Wal-Mart is truly the ‘model’ of predatory, global capitalism” – the lead player in the global Race to the Bottom.

Movements need villains. Wal-Mart is eminently qualified – a quarter-trillion dollar corporation that nevertheless demands $1 billion in yearly government subsidies, according to an exhaustive study by Good Jobs First. We recommend that every serious progressive download the document – “Shopping for Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Money to Finance Its Never-Ending Growth” – an indictment of corporate looting of public treasuries on a grand scale.

Vouchers, aisle three

There is no bottom to Wal-Mart’s social depravity. The looters-in-chief – the five heirs to Sam Walton’s fortune, worth more than $100 billion – funnel tens of millions to voucher front groups with the eventual goal of privatizing education in America. In the short term, the Walton Family Foundation hopes to create a Right-financed, alternative Black political leadership by cynically exploiting the ills of urban schools.

“The very same rightwing forces that sought to neuter Brown at every stage in its 50-year history,” we wrote on May 27, “now push privatization as a remedy for the misery they have wrought in America’s cities. They aim to profit – literally – from their own crimes.”

’s Cover Story was titled, “Vouchers: The Right’s Final Answer to Brown.”

In place of Brown, today’s voucher advocates would subsidize the “choices” that somehow become available in an American social marketplace that has historically devalued Blacks. They would achieve this unregulated educational supermarket by liquidating the principle and promise of universal, quality public education….

This then, is the Right’s answer to Brown: that urban public education is not worth funding. African Americans should join with the privatizers, put their hopes in the “market,” and abandon demands for equality in the public sphere.

One of our favorite ministers, Rev. Jeanette Pollard, writes:

Once again, I thank Black Commentator for the excellent way it brings out issues that are pertinent to the Black community. There are many working parents (all of us) who are fed up with overcrowded and dangerous public schools. The clever politicians dangle a voucher in front of parents, telling them that private schools are the way to go. The poor, uninformed parents, often overworked, only want the best education for their children and see a “voucher” as the saving grace for their children, in much the same way as probably Mr. Brown saw filing his lawsuit on behalf of his daughter, saw it helping her get a better education. Vouchers are just another way to get rid of public education, unions, etc.

The problem is with how public schools are funded. When that is changed, I believe the playing field will be level. School funding should not be based on property taxes. It should be based on sales taxes generated within the state. Then, no matter where a person “runs,” his/her child would get the same amount of money allocated for public education. This way, if a parent truly wanted his/her child to get a “private” education, come out of the pocket and send the child to a truly “private” school.

The Waltons will soon transfer $20 billion to their foundation’s political slush fund – enough money to invent and finance a galaxy of phony “minority” organizations and “movements” beholden to the rich, white Right. (See “Wal-Mart Prepares to Bury the Left Under a Mountain of Money,” April 8.)

Donna C. Lee, of San Diego, California, understands clearly that Wal-Mart isn’t just advertising cheap goods.

I’ve been following your reports regarding Wal-Mart and their secret organizations that are manipulating poor Afro-Americans and other minorities into accepting corporate America’s push for a federal school voucher program. As someone who is working toward a career in teaching, I am very disturbed by what “Sam the Monster” is doing.

In that light, I thought you might be interested in the “mainstream media” advertising that they are also pushing on the rest of America; it’s a complete, 180 degree turnaround from their clandestine activities. Check out the Walmart Foundation’s Website for all the self-righteous, pat on the backs they’re giving themselves for their tireless and devoted appreciation of America’s teachers and schools.

Rapturous warfare

Freedom Rider columnist Margaret Kimberley has concluded that “black Christians have gone down the drain along with the rest of the nation.” In her May 27 essay, Ms. Kimberley decried the “increasingly dangerous and mean spirited” emanations from white clergy who are “Wrapped Up in the Rapture” – amid silence, and worse, from Black pulpits.

The black church is now taking the easy way out. It is easy to quote scripture and say that homosexuality is a sin. It is more difficult to quote scripture and point out that warfare is a sin if the powerful warmongers call themselves Christians. Speaking out against them would mean calling their Christianity into question and might also jeopardize the possibility of a Faith Based Initiative handout to those who go along to get along.

If the church persists in ignoring the oppressed and helping the oppressors it should at least be honest. Let’s call off our King Day celebrations next January. King’s warning about the evils of racism, militarism and poverty have come to fruition. If we can’t live up to his expectations we should stop pretending to honor him. Let’s have Faith Based Initiative day instead. King can stop turning in his grave because we have ignored him and our words will be consistent with our actions.

Phyllis Jones hails from Mesquite, Texas. She hears money talking.

For those who do not know, this is the low down on black clergy and their silence or their desire to stand and denounce gay marriage. I will share these three words: FAITH BASED FUNDING. They got to have that money!

Money , the root of all evil and the anticipation of such funds have gotten black clergy afraid to say anything and jeopardize their standing in getting this money. However, if you think about it, if they stood up to the wrongs, they would get more money and support from the community. For those waiting for those faith based funds, think of what BUSHCO has done to Saddam Hussein, Chalabi, and others when they no longer needed their services.

Sherletta McCaskill appreciates the Freedom Rider’s brand of Gospel.

Amen Sister Kimberley!

First, may I congratulate you on your excellent column(s) for Black Commentator and your own informative blog.

I am the granddaughter of paternal and maternal Methodist ministers, the daughter of a Baptist minister, and a lesbian.

I continue to agonize over the status of the black church regarding sexuality. I want to be a proud member of an accepting congregation in the black church but none to my knowledge exists. There will be no gay or straight heaven as there will be no separation for race or ethnicity. I moved from my home in Ft. Lauderdale sixteen years ago and have not been a member of a church in all that time. My mother and others in my family are accepting of my sexuality but unfortunately, my 87-year-old father just recently recalled my fate of damnation on a recent visit.

Suffice it to say, I do not feel the need of the black church to bless my status. I know I belong to the Almighty. However, it is most disturbing to me that the church has lost its import or “salt” in our community while at the same time continues grafting itself to the values and fortunes of our historical enemies. Thank God for the Al Sharptons and other black politicians who bravely counter such bigotry.

You would think that the AIDS crisis in our community would wake up these so-called leaders to the obvious. Further, this spiritual, cultural and historical resource, the black church, languishes in the face of challenges within our community where we must now struggle with every muscle to surmount. Illiteracy, the criminalization of our youth and black males in particular, single mothers, ever crushing poverty, joblessness and homelessness. Not to mention the crisis in Haiti or the plight of our African/South American sisters and brothers of the Diaspora.

My sister there is much work to be done in the “highways and hedges” as black pastors have uttered in many a Sunday morning homily. I for one would stand with a movement to challenge the hegemony of a culture that unwittingly works against its own interest in regard to the people it supposedly serves.

Vouchers and such be damned! There is a Balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul… All hail the legacy of Dr. King!

A lady who signs her letter “Farm Mom” fears for her “Raptured” neighbors.

You very eloquently put my thoughts into words. I am a white farmer living in a white rural county (only one black face in the pictures of the local high schools grads).

I am however a Democrat and have always looked to blacks as a group that understood the true nature of corporate republicanism.

Long ago my rural white neighbors got their brains muddled and began to vote against their own interests. I chalked this up to the pervasive influence of racism and thus thought blacks would be immune form this “soul cancer.” Now they have found the black weak spot: faith-based initiative money, and good old fashioned religious hysteria.

I can’t think about it too much or I find myself wanting to withdraw from politics and immerse myself in my farm-mom duties. Then I begin to get a vision of the world my children and grandchildren will live in. It is so different from Martin’s “I Have a Dream” vision; it is so different from the vision we had in the Sixties when we stood up against this same powerful corporate republicanism under a different mantle in the South and again in Viet Nam.

James Clingman is a Cincinnati journalist and businessman, host of the Blackonomics web site.

Investigation by press release

The Bush Administration marked the 50th anniversary of Brown by renewing support for school vouchers and, as a side dish, announcing that it would reopen the 49-year-old case of Emmett Till, the Black teenager whose murder in Mississippi sparked national outrage. In her May 20 column, “Emmett Till and Abu Ghraib,” Margaret Kimberley questioned the White House’s timing.

Does Karl Rove have a rainy day fund of issues to raise in tough times? Did he and John Ashcroft talk about emerging cases that would make Bush look truly compassionate, i.e. friendly to black people? The decision to reopen the Emmett Till murder investigation certainly challenged the Abu Ghraib story for media attention. Did they pick Emmett Till out of a hat or was he being held in reserve? The rightness of reopening the case is clear. Who would argue against finding the evil killers of an innocent child?

The announcement of the new investigation will be a test for Ashcroft and the rest of the Bush administration. Having raised the hopes of millions with just one announcement the political geniuses must now deliver. They must be watched to guarantee that justice will truly be done in the case of Emmett Till. The war on terror should begin at home. It should not take a back seat to saving the election prospects of a man who cheated his way into the White House and lied to get his nation into a disastrous war.

A writer named Gwen, agrees.

Perpetrator as victim

“The cheerleaders for war don’t believe that Iraqis are human beings,” said Ms. Kimberley in her May 6 column, “White Supremacy in Iraq.” It is, by turns, outrageous and frightening to behold the self-pity rituals of racist warmongers. Like the Freedom Rider says, they all ask the same, stupid question.

Kip Gardner is a research associate and lab manager at Ohio State University at Wooster.

I just read your article as posted on the web site The Smirking Chimp. I just wanted to say thank you for writing one of the clearest, simplest explanations for why the war in Iraq is a colossal, horrible, deadly mistake.

While most on the right would call me a traitor for saying so, I think it is past time for the US to be shunned by the world community as an out-of-control imperial power. I consider John Kerry to be a decent guy, and a far and away better choice than the current occupant of the White House, but he still is part of the dominant national paradigm, and does not seem to have the vision to move beyond it (or perhaps the courage to speak publicly about alternatives.)

Until we can move as a nation past the attitudinal problems (and resulting behaviors) that you imply in your article, we will probably become involved in similar horrific messes in the future, or worse.

Thank you for being a voice of sanity.

U.S. to be quarantined

’s May 6 issue followed the explosion of revelations on U.S. “abuse” of Iraqi prisoners – a sanitized euphemism for war crimes. The Bush men can be counted on to supply daily proof that they are clinically delusional and criminally insane. Considering the flow of news from Iraq in May, our Cover Story headline seemed tame: “America Unfit to Rule the World.”

Now the Americans have been knocked senseless by the photographic boomerang from Abu Ghraib, revealing the psychosexual aspect of the Occupation. U.S. intelligence and psychological warfare techniques are designed to assault the target’s sense of cultural and sexual self – thus “breaking” him. Since the U.S. war in Iraq is in practice a race war, the military’s mission inevitably becomes the total subjugation of one people by the other: the breaking of a nation. Iraqis correctly perceive that Americans intend to defile their nationality and – for the men – their manhood. This aspect of the rape of Iraq is felt even more strongly than the economic pillaging of the country, because it assaults all Iraqi regions, ethnicities and classes….

Rice and Bush are worried about Abu Ghraib’s effect on their own images with the American electorate. Normally, atrocities against Arabs would not represent a domestic problem for the White House. The American electorate was largely unmoved by the collective punishment of Fallujah, where hundreds of Iraqi noncombatants were slaughtered to avenge the killing of four armed American mercenaries. Potential Bush voters care nothing for the fate of male Iraqi prisoners – but they are gravely concerned about how the war might affect young American soldiers.

We were delighted to get this letter from Sandra Nicholas, in Brooklyn, New York.