Actual screenshot of Glenn Beck's chalkboard (see lower right)
The American political right has done its best for decades to turn the name “Saul Alinsky” into a potent unifying symbol of evil leftie radical theory and practice, and oh did you know he was one of them Jews? And to be clear, he was and remains a great influence on some of the best-known political organizers of the 20th and 21st centuries.
But before he was a code-word and a dog-whistle, he was a man who did a great many things, and wrote about them with style, clarity and wit.
We here at Angry Black Lady Chronicles are conducting a book chat on Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. (Links to purchase or download the book are included at that post, and a reader provided a link to a .pdf of the text.) Reminder: we will begin this weekend with the preface as the topic of our first discussion.
So before we begin, I want to give our readers an overview of his life and work, and links where you can learn more about him and the movements for change he led and/or inspired. Continue reading
Posted in Allan, Angry Black Reader Participation, Read Me!
Tagged Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Saul Alinsky
Newt Gingrich mentioned Saul Alinsky twice in his South Carolina Klan rally Primary victory speech. This is a classic example of the coded language of Right-Wing True Believers failing to resonate outside their epistemically closed bubble. Maybe 1% of people who don’t watch Fox News or save screen-shots of Glenn Beck’s chalkboard know who he was, or why they should be frightened that he influenced President Obama somehow.
We here at the Angry Black Lady Chronicles would like to correct this ignorance by inviting you to join us for a book chat. We would like you to read Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals with us, and we’ll have a post each week to review a chapter and invite you to join us in the comments for a discussion. We’ll look to you to share what you’ve learned, what resonated with you, and how you can apply his ideas in your own political organizing for change. Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago, I was perusing the transcript of one of Presidential spokesperson Jay Carney’s press briefings where he was asked about the Keystone XL pipeline. I got a lot of signals that he was about to reject the pipeline so I posted a piece called Has the GOP given President Obama the “out” he needs to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline?
Turns out I was right and the effort by Republicans to force President Obama to make a rush decision on issuing a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline has backfired.
The State Department Wednesday will reject the Keystone XL pipeline, multiple sources following the project tell POLITICO.
The formal announcement is expected at 3 p.m. from Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. Although the permit would be rejected, TransCanada would still be allowed to continue to work on and pitch an alternative route through Nebraska.
Now, can all of you on the left who keep attacking President Obama for things he has not done and does not ultimately do stop doing that???!
Probably too much to ask…
Continue reading
Posted in Election 2012? Oy vey!, Tweet of the Day
Tagged @eclecticbrotha, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Twitter
On this, the final day of 2011, I would like to call your attention to the work of Al Giordano, founder of The Fund for Authentic Journalism.
I first became aware of Al Giordano through his blog The Field during the primary wars of 2008. Like many Obama supporters, I was feeling constantly buffeted and betrayed by the terrible reporting and laughable analysis of mainstream media pundits; and it seemed everywhere I went online, people were screaming at each other and perpetuating untrue and unhelpful memes about candidates Obama, Clinton and Edwards. At times I felt certain that these loud voices had the power to prevent Barack Obama from winning the Democratic nomination, or would sabotage his chances at winning the Presidency if he survived the primary process.
Then one day, I followed a link to Al’s blog, and I knew I had come to the right place. Continue reading
(Ben Torres/AP)
Usually I don’t participate in the back-and-forth of an election season, because it’s draining, and because it doesn’t really matter to me who the GOP nominee is: I’m not voting for them. I found this piece to be too awesome to pass up, however. The bishop Gene Robinson, the man who gave an invocation at President Obama’s inauguration kicking off the event, schools Rick Perry on his viciously anti-gay campaign ad – you know, the one people in Perry’s own campaign hated.
Robinson says:
The governor begins this 30 second spot with “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian.” He goes on to say things that Christians should be ashamed of him for.
But it gets better:
The blood of gay and lesbian soldiers flows as readily and as redly as that of other young Americans fighting in Afghanistan, yet Gov. Perry feels free to use them as political cannon fodder for his campaign. In an attempt to garner conservative Christian votes, he would stigmatize these brave young men and women who are, as we speak, risking their lives on our behalf. If this is patriotism, count me out!
Perry, like most of the current Republican field, thinks that running an anti-gay platform is going to be successful in 2012. There’s ample evidence that this is not only not paying off, but it is also damaging and fracturing Republicans and many Americans.
Robinson, like a lot of Christians, sees this as a dangerous attack on his religion and as a distortion of something that was made to be beautiful and that is based on a commitment to human rights and respect for everyone. Catholics and even young evangelicals are increasingly more supportive of gay rights, and increasingly more at odds with scripture and church doctrine. Continue reading
Posted in LGBTQ Shenanigans, Miscellany, Rick Perry Presents "Rick Perry"
Tagged Barack Obama, Christianity, election, gay, LGBT, queer, religion, Rick Perry
He heralded the killing of Osama bin Laden. He supports continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he believes Syria should be the next target of a military intervention.
But those Africans who are being slaughtered by the Lord’s Resistance Army?
Not. Worth. It.
After President Obama announced that he would be sending 100 military advisors into Central Africa, McCain had this to say:
I worry that with the best of intentions, that somehow we get engaged in a commitment that we can’t get out of. That’s happened before in our history and we need an explanation, and I’m very disappointed, again, that the administration has not consulted with members of Congress before taking such action.
Here’s the explanation: The Lord’s Resistance Army, “a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity,” is currently killing, raping, maiming and kidnapping with impunity.
Here’s the facts about the Obama administration consulting Congress: In May 2010, the United States Congress sent the “Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act” to President Obama to sign into law, which he did, on May 24th. The bill passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and by a voice vote in the House.
So this happened.
Here at home, the coming months will be another season of homecomings. Across America, our servicemen and women will be reunited with their families. Today, I can say that our troops in Iraq will definitely be home for the holidays. This December will be a time to reflect on all that we’ve been through in this war.
I’ll join the American people in paying tribute to the more than one million Americans who have served in Iraq. We’ll honor our many wounded warriors, and the nearly 4,500 American patriots, and their Iraqi and coalition partners, who gave their lives to this effort.
And finally I would note that the end of war in Iraq reflects a larger transition. The tide of war is receding. The drawdown in Iraq allowed us to refocus our fight against al-Qaeda and achieve major victories against its leadership, including Osama bin Laden. Even as we remove our last troops from Iraq, we’re beginning to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, where we’ve begun a transition to Afghan security and leadership.
When I took office, roughly 180,000 troops were deployed in both these wars, and by the end of this year that number will be cut in half — and make no mistake, it will continue to go down.
If you opposed the war in Iraq, and felt invisible; and saw how even though millions of Americans took to the streets to oppose it, they were disappeared by the media; so that these employees of large corporations could instead interview consultants who were undisclosed employees of armaments manufacturers, who in turn stood to suck up lots of money in defense contracts; and despaired when our government launched a war based on lies that killed or maimed millions of people while bleeding the US economy dry:
Then today is a very good day for you.
I thought the least I could do is send a thank-you note.
Posted in Allan, Obama 2012: Yes We Will!
Tagged Barack Obama, Iraq War, President Obama