WHOSE PARTY? WHOSE INTERESTS ?
#493 Column Written 2/1/2001

The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever. The people-beaten down today, yet rising tomorrow... The people are the real guardians of our hopes and dreams.
--Paul Robeson (1952)

For perhaps millions of African-Americans, "Florida" has become a kind of code word for many of the wrongs that continue to mar life in America. The mere mention of "Florida" evokes the ugly imagery of armed agents of the state, stopping, harassing, and intimidating hundreds (if not thousands) of earnest, would-be-voters, with the express intent of blocking people from voting; of thousands of people being turned away from their voting centers, often for spurious reasons, like insufficient I.D., the address was reportedly changed, an absentee ballot was previously filed (unbeknownst to the actual voter), and they were therefore listed as one who already voted, and assorted illegalities.

But what perhaps rankles more, to legions of Blacks across the nation, is the deafening cacophony of silence from leading (err-white) Democrats to these repeated instances of naked disenfranchisement. Recall, if you will, the poorly cast populist, Al Gore, screaming at the top of his tobacco-bred lungs, "I will fight for you!!"

When Florida showed the vile emptiness of American democracy, the Yankee brand of vote-stealing, the man who swore to "fight for you" had laryngitis. Not only didn't he "fight for you" (esp. if you were African- American or Haitian-American), but he didn't really fight for his damn self!

In a record 40-yard-dash to the bedroom of bipartisanship, neither he, nor his fellow leading democrats, could wait to yell, "Uncle." The angry dispossessed were left to rage virtually alone in the streets. Who fought for them?

For the political elite and the majoritarian media, it was as if the disenfranchisement of thousands in Florida either didn't happen, or worse, was unimportant. The corporate media began the incessant drum-beat for "bipartisanship," and "healing."
How can one heal when the injury has been ignored? By "healing" the powers that be meant, "be quiet," or "be calm" - accept the injustice. Hush. Take it. The 18th century English poet, Alexander Pope, once defined partisanship (in his words "Party-spirit") as "the madness of many for the gain of a few."

Who fought? Who didn't? Why? Why not? Who was betrayed? Why?