Civil Rights Groups Wither - New Ones Taking Their Place

This Washington Post story Civil Rights Groups Seeing Gradual End of Their Era ends with this sentence though I'd like to start my response with it. It quotes E. Ethelbert Miller:

"What would happen if W.E.B. Du Bois or Marcus Garvey had a laptop?" Du Bois helped found the NAACP in 1909, and Garvey, a rival, started a back-to-Africa movement around the same time.

We are the answer to that question. In the vacuum of black leadership 40 years after Martin Luther King's death, it's his spiritual grandchildren that are carrying his mission forward now and not the civil rights groups he might have recognized. From the WaPo piece (emphasis mine):

In New York, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which helped shape the movement's philosophy after adopting Mohandas K. Gandhi's doctrine of nonviolent protest, is scarcely known outside Manhattan. CORE conceded that it now has about 10 percent of the 150,000 members it listed in the 1960s.

In Baltimore, the near-century-old NAACP, which tore down racial barriers with deft lawyering in the courts, recently cut a third of its administrative staff because of budget shortfalls. For decades, the NAACP asserted that it was the largest civil rights group, with about half a million dues-paying members, but one of its former presidents recently acknowledged that it has fewer than 300,000.
[...]
Charles Steele, president and chief executive of the SCLC, acknowledged that squabbling nearly doomed his organization. But, he said, the SCLC is coming back. The group says it has 150,000 members at more than 70 branches, but a 2004 analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed that only 730 members paid the $25 membership dues.

Let me break it down for y'all: Color of Change now has over 400,000 members -- 25% more than the NAACP. Over 100,000 unique visitors now read this blog at Jack and Jill Politics each month (and growing fast), putting our audience soon at perhaps 10 times that of CORE. Let's not even talk about the SCLC.

We -- you reading this blog and me writing it -- we are Civil Rights 2.0. WaPo (sort of) acknowledges, stating:

Today, radio deejays, Internet groups such as Color of Change.org and organizations such as the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights are orchestrating bus rides, marches and other actions once performed by civil rights groups.
[...]
When six black teenagers in Jena, La., were being prosecuted as adults last year in the beating of a white classmate, the local branch of the NAACP played a small role in defending their rights, but it was Color of Change.org that secured their release.

Activist Al Sharpton learned about the Jena incident on the radio long after it started. Radio talk-show host Michael Baisden ranted about Jena throughout his program and helped organize bus tours to the town.

Strangely, the article doesn't mention the role of black bloggers in aiding Color of Change and in publicizing the Jena case. We kept the story alive and made sure the facts got reported right. A strange oversight indeed since the media covered our involvement pretty extensively at the time, e.g. Chicago Tribune - Blogs Help Drive Jena Protest and NPR - Bloggers A Force Behind Jena Protests.

But shoot, you and I know what time it is. What if Martin Luther King or Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers had had laptops and high speed internet access...? And blogs? Hmmm...

BTW -- the WaPo also spelled Stokely's name wrong "Stokly". Dag -- that ain't right.

Media Coverage Masks McCain's Martin Luther King Racism

Straight Talk? Not so much. More like a nervously, poorly and insincerely read hacky speech (transcript here). It also contains a lie. In his April 4 speech in Memphis, McCain said:

I remember first learning what had happened here on the 4th of April, 1968, feeling just as everyone else did back home, only perhaps even more uncertain and alarmed for my country in the darkness that was then enclosed around me and my fellow captives. In our circumstances at the time, good news from America was hard to come by.

Wow -- he must have been powerfully moved by the death of MLK while in Vietnam right? No, in 1987, he said of his POW guards (emphasis mine):

"They never gave us any meaningful news," McCain said. "They told us the day that Martin Luther King was shot, they told us the day that Bobby Kennedy was shot, but they never bothered to tell us about the moon shot. So it was certainly selected news."

In fact, sounds like he actually felt differently from most Americans then. His moral compass pointed in the wrong direction, just as it still does on so many issues like civil rights, Iraq and the economy.

For reasons that are unclear, the media is not pushing very hard on John McCain for his former hard, repeated opposition to the Martin Luther Luther King holiday. Markos lists his weak excuses and explanations for his opposition and turnaround here and here. The fact that he would even be allowed to mention MLK's name in public feels somehow insulting to me. McCain would have us believe that he made a single mistake and then got educated. Instead, there's a disturbing pattern and for some reason, a Free Ride for McCain.

Color of Change sent out an email today to its members (including me) that breaks it down with a link to more facts (emphasis mine):

In August 1983 he fought the holiday, voting to block a piece of bipartisan legislation honoring him that was supported by even conservative Republicans--including Dick Cheney--and signed into law by President Reagan.

McCain went on to resist recognizing a King holiday in his home state of Arizona. When Arizona's state legislature failed to pass a bill recognizing a holiday honoring Dr. King, the governor at the time,
Bruce Babbit, created the holiday by executive order. Babbit's
successor, Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded the order as his first act in
office, doing away with the holiday. John McCain's response? He defended the governor, not Dr. King. (After undoing the holiday, the same governor went on to publicly support referring to Black people as "pickaninnies").

In 1990, seven years after his initial vote, McCain went along with
establishing a King holiday. On the campaign trail in 2000, facing
questions about his history on this issue, McCain declared he had
"evolved."

Looking at the rest of McCain's public record, even recently, it's
hard to see much evidence of an "evolution". In fact, McCain has
consistently opposed a civil rights agenda:

• He voted an amazing FOUR times against the Civil Rights Act of 1990--a bill designed to make it easier for employees to prove job discrimination and imposing harsher penalties on bosses who discriminated.
  
• In 2004 he opposed affirmative action in college admissions--a key component of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that is among King's key legislative victories.
  
• He has voted at least 8 times against raising the minimum wage.
  
• And as recently as last month, he argued against federal
  intervention to help Americans, disproportionately Black Americans, who have faced foreclosure during the housing crisis.

Evolved? I don't think so. It says a lot that no one in his campaign thought it might look um, inappropriate and servile to have a black man holding McCain's umbrella as he spouted a whole lot of words with no feeling in them.

What I think is that he waved the white flag of surrender to public opinion on Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. His symbolic gestures of opposition were popular with a shrinking group of people. He got booed at his own event when he admitted to voting against the King holiday (video here at ThinkProgress). Now he's reduced to shufflin' mumblin' and dissemblin' on his record. Let's keep on the heat. Wow -- it must really gall ol' Archie Bunker McCain that he's likely to have to run against Barack Obama.

CNN Does Disservice To Black Bloggers And JJP Specifically (Updated!)

I got home at 11:18pm, and as I walked in the door a Twitter friend said he saw Jack & Jill Politics mentioned on CNN. It was Anderson Cooper 360, and my Tivo was already on it. The subject: pressure on black superdelegates to support Obama.

The piece referenced Color of Change explicitly and showed screenshots of JJP and Skeptical Brotha (ironically on the day he dropped his own support for Obama). It's two four minutes. See below



There are serious problems with this reporting, and it illustrates the information problem we have with incumbent media providers who cannot or will not take a 360-degree view of the issues. Let me enumerate.

1. As far as I know, none of the black bloggers referenced in the piece were invited to comment directly on CNN.

Skeptical Brotha and JJP certainly were not. I would happily have jetted over to the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle to add some much-needed context. I'm right here yo! I know TV time moves quickly, but they had a responsibility to at least call. They have our number.

2. Anderson and Soledad are not well-versed on the issue.

I'm not saying they are malicious, but they lack the full perspective and analysis behind the effort to pressure black superdelegates, at least as its been discussed on this blog.

On Feb 29, rikyrah wrote the following:

The main thing is that they're putting out there, in the MSM, that Black folk are pressuring them, for no good reason. Like, ' irrationally', Black folk are demanding they switch their allegiance to Obama - JUST BECAUSE HE'S BLACK.

And, that's simply not the case.

This came to me last night, and I'll present it to you:

Imagine if this were any other ethnic group. They had one of ‘their own’ running, and the main competition race-baited/ethnic-baited ‘your own’.

Please explain to me what other ethnic group would remotely tolerate THEIR elected representative supporting the competition POST race-baiting?

Can you imagine it with ANY other group? Yeah, neither can I.

WE’RE the only ones who would allow this BS….and SHAME ON US.

That's the key for me:::: POST RACE-BAITING::::

On Mar 6, I wrote the following

the additional point i was trying to make, about the African-American vote was not an attempt to compare hardships with women or any other group. i'm just tired of feeling held hostage. I think hillary could have made some much better choices in this campaign that were tough but without being so offensive and dismissive of this particular group of voters. there are ways to go negative, but pitting blacks against latinos or minimizing obama as "the black" candidate should not be on the table.

on jack and jill, many commenters and some of the bloggers have said they won't support hillary specifically because of this. because it sets a bad precedent for future black candidates. it is not random rage but rather considered-judgment about the future and its prospects. often people reply (as wolfson did) and say, "well, the blacks will come back in the end."

if we do, then we're rewarding an extreme level of negativity and possibly sabotaging future black presidents. our blogger rikyrah has been the chief proponent of this line of thinking, but i pretty much agree with her.

3. Without comment from the bloggers and lacking insight themselves, Anderson and Soledad left it to the very black superdelegates being pressured and allowed them to frame the issue and "respond" as they saw fit.

This meant they framed the issue as "these black people want me to support Obama just because he's black." That is not the case, but such an oversimplified argument is easy to defend against.

To give some credit, Anderson and Soledad got half of the argument right, and it's easy to see how they would simplify our position based on the Color of Change petition. They focus on the need for black superdelegates to vote with their districts, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama.

There are compelling reasons to buy this argument and Color of Change laid them out, tying them to historic issues of black representation. But to my mind, and certainly to rikyrah, the issue of voting with your district is not the main point (in fact, reps strictly voting with their constituents is not always a good idea. sometimes the voters are wrong or uninformed and need to be lead. see: Jim Crow)

No, the more serious issue that we've repeatedly been all over here at JJP is that black superdelegates who continue to support Clinton also support her nasty, divisive, race-baiting campaign tactics. By continuing to stand by her despite these repeated offenses against Obama, against the very black churches that keep many of these people in office, they are complicit in defining a roadmap that will be used to undermine future black candidates.

This is not just about supporting Obama. It's about the future of black politics. It's about holding the line on unacceptable behavior. It's about taking a stand against tactics that would pit blacks against Latinos or would try to define any candidate like Obama as just black or would try to stoke the fears of Islam among a clearly-fearful populace.

Meeks and Cleaver would never provide this perspective because it's too damning to them. They have no answer. There is no justification. They should, however, have been forced to address it. But Anderson and Soledad could not or would not do it. And when they gave "airtime" to black blogs, they put words in our mouths, framing the issue as a simple mathematical demand that the superdelegates vote with their districts.