the new Black Commentator is up - major read!

[donsu]

http://www.blackcommentator.com/index.html


articles by Bruce Dixon and Rep. Bennie G. Thompson for starters

[daninthemoon]

1. Thanks for the link.

[Helga Scow Stern]

2. Nominated! Obama gets a "C" grade, Conyers in Honor Society.

snip>>>

"By the CBC Monitor’s standards, seven Congressional Black Caucus members are derelict. The worst malefactors, including the aforementioned Harold Ford (D-TN) and David Scott (D-GA), are Sanford Bishop (D-GA), at 25 percent, Albert Wynn (D-MD), at 30 percent, Artur Davis (D-AL), 40 percent, Gregory Meeks (D-NY), 45 percent, and William Jefferson (D-LA), at 55 percent.

These men have failed our people, and sold out to other interests.

The CBC Monitor gives credit to those members who have stood tall, as well. They are called the Honor Society. First among the honor list is Rep. John Conyers, Jr., a founding father of the CBC from Detroit, followed by Barbara Lee (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Robert Scott (D-VA), John Lewis (D-GA), and Charles Rangel. All registered 100 percent grades. “These are the stand up people,” said Leutisha Stills.

The CBC Monitor survey’s nine “bright line” issues tracked the votes of members on the bankruptcy bill, estate tax, gang deterrence, REAL ID Act, Iraq authorization, Watt Amendment (federal authorization), the class action bill, CAFTA, and the energy bill and Capps Amendment. The Senate’s lone Black member, Barack Obama, earned a “C” grade (70 percent) for his vote for the Republican-led so-called tort “reform” measure that limited access to the courts for citizens harmed by corporations. Obama’s vote placed him in the company of Edolphus Towns (D-NY), Kendrick Meek (D-FL), and Sheila Jackson-Lee, who all scored in the 70s – marking them as “underachievers” by the CBC Monitor’s standards.

The majority of the CBC ranked in the 80s and 90s, earning “A”s and “B”s. The survey found that these members are solidly within the spectrum of the Black Political Consensus. That’s good news. The defection to the Right of the Seven Derelicts, and the backsliding of the Underachievers, is disturbing. The Derelicts must be ousted. The Underachievers should be educated to respond to the people’s will. The Honor Roll should be applauded."

more...

[slor]

3. That website rocks!

I love the writers on their staff. We should all pitch in and have one of their speakers come to my town, for a discussion!

[Laughing Mirror]

4. "It was felons who were the first to feed, the first to respond to need

The first to get up and do something."

Rescue came from the grass roots
The people, not FEMA, saved themselves

by Bruce Dixon, Associate Editor

"The first folks to send a couple of vans of food and supplies was TOPS, The Ordinary Peoples Society, a prison ministry in Dothan AL founded and staffed by ex-offenders. They organized food from a food bank, pooled their money to get additional goods and moved it to Mobile where they connected with a second organization of formerly incarcerated brothers down there to distribute it while they went back to Dothan for more. That's why we tell everybody now that it was felons who were the first to feed, the first to respond to need, the first to get up and do something. They didn’t wait for permission or for a contract. That’s real leadership.”

Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of Dothan Alabama and Paul Jackson of Mobile each spent a decade in prison. Both are part of a network of black civic and religious organizations that have fought for years to restore the right to vote to over 200,000 former prisoners in Alabama, most of them African American men. Glasgow and his organization hustled food and got the first vans on the road southbound to the gulf. Jackson and his organization met the vans and guided them to where the need was greatest. “We started going into the projects,” said Glasgow. “We went to Orange Grove and other places, somewhere the water had reached second floor windows, but nobody had seen FEMA or the Red Cross. We just started targeting areas where nobody else was coming.”

. . .

“We call ourselves SOS After Katrina” said Latosha Brown. “That stands for Saving Our Selves, cause if we don’t who will?”

. . .
The web site of SOS After Katrina is www.sosafterkatrina.org

Some of the organizations included in SOS After Katrina are:

Alabama Coalition on Black Civic Participation,

Malcolm X Grassroots Organization,

The Ordinary Peoples Society

One For Life,

Southern Christian Leadership Council

Black Leadership Forum

The Hip Hop Caucus

Clergy Who Care, Birmingham AL

Circle of Love Fellowship Minstries

The Hip Hop UN

NAACP, Mississippi Chapter

National Medical Association, Jackson MS chapter

Center for Pan Asian Community Service

Students and student leaders at the Atlanta University Center

Congregations of dozens of large and small churches in several states

http://www.blackcommentator.com/151/151_dixon_katrina.html

[Laughing Mirror]

5. The always pertinent Margaret Kimberley has the scoop on deadbeat Cheney

What did Dick Cheney do during the hurricane Katrina catastrophe?

a. Nabbed yet another no bid contract for Halliburton

b. Planned nuclear war against Iran

c. Helped John Bolton destroy the United Nations

d. Reminded Judith Miller to keep quiet

e. Stole the wages of workers in the Gulf

f. Had a heart attack and/or knee aneurism

All of these responses may be true, and only some may be true. We will never know and therein lies a huge problem for our country. It is an understatement to say that the Bushmen operate without transparency. They will tell us what they want, when they want, if they want.

The Vice President is the champion of administration secrecy. Despite his history of serious health problems he has never released all of his medical records to the press. In June of this year he paid a visit to the Vail Valley Medical Center under the name “Dr. Hoffman.” He allegedly went to see an orthopedic surgeon about an old knee injury. That sounds more probable now than it did at the time, but there were also rumors that he had an EKG on the same day. If the vice president uses an alias like a fugitive from justice or a reclusive celebrity, tales of a secret EKG are bound to follow....

http://www.blackcommentator.com/151/151_freedom_rider_cheney_katrina.html