Jack & Jill Politics

That’s the question they are asking over at BlackAgendaReport. They are working on a new report card for the CBC. Never before in American history have individual African-Americans had more power to shape how the government responds to the needs of other African-Americans. And measures to help African-Americans help a whole lot of other Americans who have had the American dream deferred or delayed, frankly. BAR says:

The words “politician,” “leader,” and “political leader” are often used interchangeably. If they are indeed the same things, we have the right to demand that black politicians act like leaders. True leaders never confine their demands to the immediately possible, to those measures which can be enacted into law in this month, this year, or the next. Leaders possess vision, and they exercise leadership to make today’s political impossibilities into tomorrow’s realities.

Including when it comes to issues like Katrina:

Thousands died in the man-made disasters attendant to Hurricane Katrina due to government failures on every level, from presidential refusals to fund and maintain levees, to the failure of federal, state and local officials to plan for evacuation, but so far as we know only one government employee was fired, and none have seen a day in a court of law. The majority of pre-Katrina New Orleans residents were black and renters. So-called reconstruction efforts have pointedly excluded jobs, housing, schools, health care and infrastructure that would enable them to return, to re-unite their families and to rebuild their communities. National Democratic party leaders, always afraid of being too closely identified in the minds of white America with the problems of blacks can never be counted to stand up for us if our own nominal representatives, the Congressional Black Caucus, does not.

BAR says they are working with the CBCMonitor on a new CBC 2007 report card. Chances are good, people will be paying closer attention given the CBC’s new power. I hope that the report addresses individual voting records on some of the bright line issues like Katrina, defense spending, voting rights, healthcare and education that BAR mention in this article.