Cynthia A. McKinney

Mr. Speaker, I wish to enter the following into the Congressional Record:

Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record:

In an effort to save both U.S. and Iraqi lives by adhering

to International War and common decency, I sent the following

letter to the Captain of the Navy's top hospital ship. Thomas

J. Nagy, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Health, Johns

Hopkins, '77-'79.

November 12, 2006.

To the Captain, USNS Comfort: Would it not be to the

benefit of all if the USS Comfort were to return immediately

to the Persian Gulf to provide life-saving health care to

Iraqi infants and children who are dying in huge numbers for

the lack of medical services and supplies.

Further, does not the Geneva Convention on the

Responsibilities of Occupying Powers require that the U.S.,

as the de facto if not de jure Occupying Power in Iraq

furnish lifesaving health care to Iraqis?

Finally, please forward my note to the U.S. Navy's Judge

Advocate General as well as the captain of the USN HOPE and

the captains of any other USN Hospital Ships.

I request a written reply.

Sincerely,

Thomas J. Nagy.

Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record.

[From the Black Commentator, Apr. 13, 2006]

The McKinney Affair--Rampaging Racism and a Cowardly Caucus

(By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble)

There are profound lessons to be learned from the ongoing

travails of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), under

siege by white America at large, the leadership of her own

party, and the chairman of her own caucus.

In the aftermath of McKinney's run-in with a Capitol Hill

police officer, we have witnessed an orgy of unadulterated

defamation that is actually directed at Black women in

general. In rejecting and denouncing McKinney's defense, her

tormentors demonstrate that the very concept of racial

profiling was never sincerely accepted among most white

Americans, and that 9/11 is just an excuse for undoing

decades of legal and political struggles against the

abominable practice.

So virulent and shameless have been the attacks on

McKinney--spewing caricatures of the six-term lawmaker that

reflect whites' own hallucinatory visions of Black people--it

leads us to conclude that racists are conducting a kind of

ritual, an exorcism to cast the ``militant Black'' out of the

national polity, once and for all. Disgustingly, a number of

Black voices have joined mob, in order to prove that they are

reasonable and trustworthy Negroes who won't intrude on white

folks' illusions of innocence.

Most distressingly, the McKinney affair dramatically

demonstrates that the Congressional Black Caucus has been

eviscerated as a body. The CBC is revealed as collectively

gutless, devoid of any semblance of Black solidarity, without

which it has no reason for being.

CBC Hits New Low

We at BC had previously believed that April, 2005, when 37

percent of the 42 Black House members voted for Republican

bills, was the lowest point in Congressional Black Caucus

history. A year later, the CBC has found a new nadir. On the

evening of April 5, undoubtedly on orders from House Minority

Leader Nancy Pelosi, CBC chairman Mel Watt gathered twenty or

so members to browbeat McKinney into firing her legal team

and cease appearing before the media. Watt absented himself

from the beat-down, so that it would not appear to be an

``official'' CBC event.

As congressional aides wandered in and out of the room,

some Members dutifully echoed Pelosi's demand that McKinney

not frame the March 28 confrontation with the policeman as a

``racial'' incident, and that she issue an apology on the

House floor the following morning. According to several

sources who spoke with BC on condition of anonymity, and

based on an account given by McKinney staff assistant Faye

Coffield to a weekly Atlanta meeting of the Georgia Coalition

for the People's Agenda, a ``consensus'' was reached that

McKinney would deliver the apology and abandon efforts to

defend herself in the media (although not her legal team).

The next morning, at the appointed hour, McKinney was

prepared to offer her apology to the House. But Mel Watt had

already put the word out that CBC members were to renege on

their part of the deal. The Caucus must not stand with

McKinney when she stepped to the microphone. Mel Watt, Nancy

Pelosi's poodle, attempted to enforce his Mistress's wish

that McKinney appear utterly isolated and alone. Nothing

should distract from the Democrats' non-strategy of doing and

saying nothing until mid-term elections in November. The

Republicans must be allowed to self-destruct without

interference. McKinney's charge of racial profiling was a

distraction from the Democratic non-strategy--so she must be

shunned. Mel Watt was the enforcer--the designated shunner-

in-chief.

Pelosi appears to harbor a deep hatred for McKinney, whom

she cannot control. Most recently, the 51-year-old Georgia

lawmaker defied the Leader's orders, voting in favor of a

Republican bill, cynically modeled on Democrat John Murtha's

measure for a quick exit from Iraq. She was among only three

Democrats, and the only CBC member, to do so. McKinney also

ignored Pelosi's order that Democrats boycott hearings on

Katrina and leave the field to Republicans.

However, Pelosi has been the aggressor all along, bent on

bringing the CBC and other progressives to heel as she

pursues her spineless non-strategy for victory by default

over the GOP--a scenario that by definition requires African

Americans to mute their own demands, to be quiet and

compliant. When McKinney returned to congress in January 2005

after a two-year hiatus, Pelosi denied her seniority, bumping

her down to freshman status despite her previous ten years on

The Hill. Not a peep from the CBC, cowed by their Leader and,

recent events have shown, packed with members who are

themselves fearful that McKinney's militancy will raise the

bar of constituent expectations for their own performances on

Black people's behalf.

On the House floor, the morning of April 6, Pelosi/Watt had

set McKinney up for further humiliation. Not only would she

be required to deliver an apology that would be seen as an

admission of guilt (by those who had already condemned and

defamed her), but the absence of CBC members at her side

would mark her as a lone ``extremist,'' a ``loon'' whose

politics could be dismissed out of hand. Why, even McKinney's

own colleagues won't stand with her. She's crazy (like the

rest of those darkies who cry racism).

According to several congressional sources, McKinney

confronted a gaggle of CBC members, reminding them of the

consensus agreement of the night before, in which they had

promised a display of physical solidarity at the microphone

in return for her concessions. White Congresswoman Marcy

Kaptur (D-OH), seeing the commotion, hurried over to the

Black circle: ``I'll stand with you, Cynthia.'' Others

stepped forward to fulfill their pledge, despite CBC chairman

Mel Watt's treacherous machinations.

Here is a partial list of those who were videotaped

standing with McKinney when she read the words of apology

that had been demanded of her:

*Elijah Cummings (MD), *Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (MI),

*Barbara Lee (CA), *Alcee Hastings (FL), *Maxine Waters (CA),

*Bobby Rush (IL), *Corrine Brown (FL), *Major Owens (NY),

*Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX), Marcy Kaptur (OH), Dennis Kucinich

(OH), Jose Serrano (NY), Bob Filner (CA), (*CBC members).

Only nine of the 20-plus CBC members who had reached

``consensus'' on standing with their sister the night before,

bucked Pelosi's petty dictatorial edict--and straw-boss Mel

Watt's attempt to enforce it.

Once upon a time, the CBC could collectively call itself

``the conscience of the congress.'' No more.

Multi-Profiling and Sheer Malevolence

By bowing to Pelosi, Black congresspersons reinforce her

and other white's belief that they can pick and choose the

African American leaders and representatives they deal with,

and isolate the rest, while still retaining mass Black

support for the Democratic Party. Such Blacks are enablers of

racism, and must eventually pay the price at the hands of

their constituents, who are no different than the Black

Georgia voters who sent McKinney to Washington six times.

Worse, in urging McKinney to drop the ``racial'' aspect of

her defense--to pretend that she was not racially profiled,

when they know that police profiling is near-universal--they

do grave injury to fundamental Black interests.

Days after his attempt to pound McKinney into dust, the

duplicitous Mel Watt related to the Charlotte Observer his

own scary run-in with Capitol police ``a year or so ago'':

``I was running to the floor to vote and an officer said,

`Can I see your ID?' and I said, 'No' and kept running. I

looked back and he had his hand on his gun. Then another

(Capitol) police officer said, `Member.' He recognized me (as

a House member). It just so happened that the first (officer)

was white and the other one was black . . . I was probably

very rash. In retrospect, I thought to myself, `You had to be

out of your mind.' I was trying to get to a vote and he had a

job to do.''

Watt understands very well that the Black officer, who

didn't go for his gun, but instead called his white partner

off, was intervening in a case of racial profiling. Yet

Watt's desire to stay in the good graces of his Leader,

Pelosi, drives him to conspire against a fellow Black

congressperson, Cynthia McKinney, whose recent hair makeover

is said to have made her fair game to be accosted by Capitol

police. Said McKinney:

``Do I have to contact the police every time I change my

hairstyle? How do we account for the fact that when I wore my

braids every day for 11 years, I still faced this problem,

primarily from certain police officers.''

Nobody knows better than Black officers that racism is

rampant in the Capitol Police force. Of the 1,200 officers,

29 percent are Black, and many still have racial bias suits

outstanding. ``You have, basically, a renegade police

department up here, that's been operating under the

protection of Congress,'' said Charles J. Ware, an

attorney representing the Capitol Black Police

Association.

But it's not just race. Police officers, like workers in

any organization, spend much of their time talking shop. For

Capitol police, the subject of their shop-talk is the members

of congress they are hired to protect. Cynthia McKinney is

famous--no less so on Capitol Hill. She is the Black woman

viciously branded as a friend of ``terrorists,'' the most

uppity African American in the federal legislature. The cops

are quite aware of what she looks like, new hair-do or not.

A McKinney lawyer got it right when he told a Howard

University press conference that his client was targeted for

reasons of ``sex, race and Ms. McKinney's progressiveness.''

The cops know who McKinney is--they have profiled her

politically. Michael C. Ruppert, former Los Angeles cop and

current honcho of the popular web site From the Wilderness,

has felt the police hostility directed at his longtime

friend, Cynthia McKinney:

`` I have walked the halls of Congress with Cynthia

McKinney maybe eight to ten times. I have walked into and out

of the Cannon and Longworth house office buildings with her.

I have walked to hearings in the Rayburn house office

building with her. I have walked the underground tunnels from

one of those office buildings directly to the edge of the

House floor and its anteroom with her. I can tell you one

thing for certain because I have seen it and I have felt it.

Cynthia McKinney and her staff get treated differently from

just about anyone else on the Hill. It's subtle, but so is

the taste of dirt when it's in your mouth.''

Although the Capitol police have failed to produce a

surveillance tape of McKinney's confrontation with their

officer, the congresswoman captured one incident in the

movie, ``American Blackout,'' now being screened at sites

around the country. The film depicts McKinney's investigation

of voting irregularities in the 2000 elections. One segment

shows the congresswoman being accosted by police as she and

her party approach the Longworth building of the Capitol.

McKinney turns to the camera and reports that police subject

her to such treatment ``all the time.''

Does that happen to 535 members of congress ``all the

time''? Not hardly.

California Rep. Tom Lantos, according to the web reference

site Wikipedia, ``ran over a teenager in the Capitol parking

area and refused to stop despite screams from the crowd. He

never apologized for the hit-and-run either.'' The Boston

Globe reported that Lantos was not charged with hit-and-run,

but was only fined $25 for ``failure to pay full time and

attention.'' However, a teacher accompanying the student

was threatened with arrest by Capitol police when she

chased Lantos' car, demanding that he stop.

Apparently Capitol police are quite zealous in protecting

their lawmakers--if they are white.

In an otherwise inane, anti-McKinney article, Black

columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson gave some historical

perspective to recent events:

``In past years, the Caucus raised heck when a white

Republican Congressman punched a black Capitol police officer

and a year later Ohio Democratic Representative Louis Stokes

was hassled by Capitol police. And the Congressional Black

Caucus rushed to their defense.''

Not this time, not for Cynthia McKinney. The Congressional

Black Caucus is broken.

Sex and the Federal City

Around midnight on April 8, Saturday Night Live's Kenan

Thompson performed a grotesque, bewigged skit in which he

conjured up a fat, sloppy, dull-witted, belligerent, loud-

talking, no-listening, from-deep-in-the-ghetto character who

was supposed to be--Cynthia McKinney. Of course, this TV

minstrel's interpretation bore no resemblance to the

congressperson--daughter of one of Atlanta's first Black

policemen, a former faculty member at Clark Atlanta

University, world traveler and sought-after speaker, six-term

legislator. But that did not matter. Although SNL does superb

work caricaturing public personalities, its usual standards

did not apply in McKinney's case. The skit was a dehumanizing

assault on Black women as a group, with ``Cynthia'' standing

in for the female gender of her race.

A specific profile of Black women exists in the minds of

vast sections of white America. As Dr. Abdul Karim Bangura

relates in this issue of BC, in ``an analysis of White

students'' stereotypes of Black women by professor of women's

studies and sociology Rose Weitz at Arizona State University

and Wakonse fellow Leonard Gordon at the same university, the

students primarily characterize Black women as loud,

aggressive, argumentative, stubborn, and bitchy.''

White men (and women, and some Black men) on and off

Capitol Hill are eager to vilify and diminish McKinney, to

call her a ``bitch,'' a ``racist,'' ``crazy'' and all manner

of epithets. This abuse is actually directed against the

defamers' twisted idea of who and what Black women are. So

diseased are their minds, they see only their sickness-

induced delusions. White supremacy allows them to translate

their delusions into public policy. September 11 gave them a

free pass to run buck wild, with no apologies, under the

umbrella of ``homeland security.''

Black Voters Will Decide

It can be no consolation to Rep. McKinney, that she is just

a convenient target for what we now recognize as a great

resurgence of racism in the United States. The South rules a

South that is not defined geographically but socio-

politically. White Americans have become much more homogenous

in the electronic and high-mobility age--to the detriment of

sanity. Their never-forsaken dreams of domestic and planetary

racial conquest were given a Frankenstein-like jolt and boost

by the Bush regime, which spoke directly to the predatory

core of American myth and historical practice. Emboldened,

they have snared Cynthia McKinney in one of their IRTs:

Improvised Racist Traps. She awaits the decision of a grand

jury.

The moral and political collapse of the Congressional Black

Caucus could not come at a worse time--but it has occurred.

Corroded by corporate money dependent on corporate media--

with the near extinction of independent Black media--adrift

in the gulf between the needs of the Black masses and the

narrow aspirations of the minuscule hyper-mobile Black

classes and still steeped in rank male chauvinism much of

Black ``leadership'' cannot abide a genuinely progressive,

charismatic female in their midst. Many also look on in

sulking jealousy at the burgeoning unity and militancy of

Latinos, whose grassroots are on the move and whose media

support their cause.

The CBC cannot even support each other.

When CBC members urged Cynthia McKinney to forsake the

truth, to hide the ugly fact of racial (and political, and

sexual) profiling they gave enormous aide and comfort to the

enemy. If there was one victory that African Americans had

achieved in the post-Civil Rights era it was to make racial

profiling legally, politically and socially unacceptable.

This victory was the fruit of countless suitor

demonstrations--all manner of political struggles--and the

legacy of the legions of dead, maimed, jailed and humiliated

victims of profiling who became the focus of sustained Black

action.

September 11 provided the excuse to undo decades of anti-

profiling victories. Profiling is reckoned to be a good

thing. Now the racists seek to reestablish arbitrary and

capricious white supremacy, with legislation that would de

facto deputize every police officer as an agent of ``homeland

security'' who need not respect the constitution in the case

of ``suspected'' undocumented immigrants. At that point, all

persons of color become grist for the suspicion mill. Just as

the Capitol policeman chose not ``recognize'' Cynthia

McKinney as a congressperson, any cop could willfully fail to

recognize his fellow Americans and strip them of their

rights. Such a regime already exists in designated ``drug

zones'' in urban America where everyone is suspect.

Yet the CBC allows Republicans and racist Democrats to jeer

and bully Cynthia McKinney into a legal cul-de-sac because

she dares to cite profiling.

The masses of African Americans know the deal--they are

profiled constantly in stores, when observed outside their

neighborhoods, on the highways, when breathing while Black.

McKinney's version of events does not seem bizarre to them.

Although the laughing racist hyenas convince each other--with

the tacit help of be chair Mel Watt--that McKinney is on the

ropes, it is the Black constituents of Dekalb County who will

decide if she is ``crazy'' for standing up for her (and our)

dignity and rights.

When McKinney arrived back in Atlanta shortly after her

confrontation with the uniformed profiler, State

Representative Tyrone Brooks, president of the Georgia

Association of Black Elected officials, was among those to

greet and support her: ``It's really not about Cynthia

McKinney,'' said Brooks. ``It's about African-Americans in

America who are victims of racial profiling every day.''

Much of the Congressional Black Caucus seem to have lost

touch with this reality. As a body, they have lost their

moorings, and must be rehabilitated, surgically. A bunch of

them have got to go.

BC Co-Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are writing a

book to be titled, Barack Obama and the Crisis in Black

Leadership.