Black Activists Against the Congressional Black Caucus

The devolution of the CBC [Congressional Black Caucus] can be directly traced to the flow of white corporate money to Black Democrats since roughly the turn of the 21st century.

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There will be a hitch in this year’s celebration of Black elite self-satisfaction in the nation’s capital. Visitors approaching the Washington Convention Center on Wednesday morning, September 24, the first day of the annual Congressional Black Caucus legislative conference, will be greeted by placards reading: "CBC Supports Racist Israeli Apartheid!"; "Racism in Ferguson, Same As Racism In Gaza!"; "The Internet Belongs to the People, Not the Corporations!"; and, "The CBC Belongs to Corporate America!"

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The folks who are organizing the “Shame” rally are, through their own example, giving permission to other Black people to break the taboo – to rain on the Black Caucus’s self-serving and duplicitous parade.

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The activists were struck by the speed with which the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed its July 11 resolution, essentially giving Israel a blank check to kill over 2,000 Palestinians over the next several weeks. The Black Caucus followed the rest of the herd, erasing any link between the current national Black elected leadership and the historical African American consensus on peace. Solidarity with other oppressed peoples is passé in the CBC’s political/commerical marketplace. Ture noted that the Black Caucus’s two Muslim members – Keith Ellison, of Minneapolis, and Andre Carson, of Indianapolis – joined in the “cowardly act,” as did liberal stalwarts John Conyers (MI), Maxine Waters (CA) and Barbara Lee (CA). Not a single Black lawmaker dared even to abstain from the vote, lest they anger those who stand guard over Israel’s privilege to kill at will.

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While Black median income and household wealth plummet, the Caucus grows fat from corporate patronage of its power-broker enterprise – most conspicuously, its gala celebration each September. Most of the CBC is in thrall of the giant telecoms that conspire, with the help of President Obama and his FCC chairman, to destroy net neutrality.

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Back in June, fully 80 percent of the CBC’s 40 full-voting members had either opposed (27) or declined to vote (5) on Florida Rep. Alan Grayson’s measure to bar the Pentagon from transferring military arms and equipment to state and local police departments. Only eight Black lawmakers stood with Grayson to halt the flow of weapons that, in his words, “are often used by a majority to terrorize a minority.”

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The barrel is rotten to its core, full of cynical hustlers whose most immediate allegiance is to the Democratic Party, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street.

  Black Agenda Report