marjorie says...
This essay by Mike Davis (an author who writes extensively about urban areas) is worth the read--it's from September 2004. Excellent commentary on urban development and the consequences for the poor, and he orients it in the larger picture of African Americans in this country.
Poor, Black, and Left Behind |
by Mike Davis; TomDispatch; September 24, 2004 |
The evacuation of
Only at the last moment, with winds churning
In the event, Ivan the Terrible spared
Over the last generation, City Hall and its entourage of powerful developers have relentlessly attempted to push the poorest segment of the population -- blamed for the city's high crime rates -- across the
But
The result, almost certainly, will be a spate of avoidable deaths. But then again the victims will be Black or Brown and poor.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the
The DLC, of course, has long yearned to bring white guys and fat cats back to a Nixonized Democratic Party. Arguing that race had fatally divided Democrats, the DLC has tried to bleach the Party by marginalizing civil rights agendas and Black leadership. African-Americans, it is cynically assumed, will remain loyal to the Democrats regardless of the treasons committed against them. They are, in effect, hostages.
Thus the sordid spectacle -- portrayed in Fahrenheit 9/11 -- of white Democratic senators refusing to raise a single hand in support of the Black Congressional Caucus's courageous challenge to the stolen election of November 2000.
The Kerry campaign, meanwhile, steers a straight DLC course toward oblivion. No Democratic presidential candidate since Eugene McCarthy's run in 1968 has shown such patrician disdain for the Democrats' most loyal and fundamental social base. While Condoleezza Rice hovers, a tight-lipped and constant presence at Dubya's side, the highest ranking, self-proclaimed "African American" in the Kerry camp is Teresa Heinz ((born and raised in white-colonial privilege).
This crude joke has been compounded by Kerry's semi-suicidal reluctance to mobilize Black voters. As Rainbow Coalition veterans like Ron Waters have bitterly pointed out, Kerry has been absolutely churlish about financing voter registration drives in African-American communities. Ralph Nader -- I fear -- was cruelly accurate when he warned recently that "the Democrats do not win when they do not have Jesse Jackson and African Americans in the core of the campaign."
In truth, Kerry, the erstwhile war hero, is running away as hard as he can from the sound of the cannons, whether in
Kerry's apathetic and uncharismatic attitude toward people of color will not be repaired by last-minute speeches or campaign staff appointments. Nor will it be compensated for by his super-ardent efforts to woo Reagan Democrats and white males with war stories from the ancient Mekong Delta.
A party that in every real and figurative sense refuses to shelter the poor in a hurricane is unlikely to mobilize the moral passion necessary to overthrow George Bush, the most hated man on earth.
Mike Davis is the author of Dead Cities: And Other Tales as well as Ecology of Fear and co-author of Under the Perfect Sun: the San Diego Tourists Never See, among other books.
Copyright C2004 Mike Davis
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