Black Lives Don’t Matter (To Congress)
The Klick-Klack lady in red (Kimberly Klacik) is running for Congress in Maryland’s 7th District with the usual Republican talking points of opportunity zones, school vouchers, ending entitlements, etc. She is black, as are a number of other Republican candidates in Maryland, spoke at the RNC convention, and puts on a kick-ass video introducing herself! Her primary argument is that Baltimore is poverty-stricken, has been run by Democrats for decades, and Black Lives Don’t Matter for these past members of Congress. The last Congressman for this district was Elijah Cummings, a useful tool of the Democratic Party. The person who won his seat in a special election is Kweisi Mfume, former congressman from the same district, and disgraced former president of the NAACP.
The 7th District in Maryland, like in mostly all states, is extremely heterogeneous: rich and poor, white and people of color, rural and urban. Klacik is targeting the city of Baltimore for her campaign. Without even knowing who she is, she’s pretty much guaranteed the Republican vote, usually 21% for the last 2 elections. I had run in 2016 as a Green and garnered 3%, a relatively high number for a congressional election in Maryland for a 3rd party (Libertarian Party included).
As the Green Party candidate myself in 2016 I made the same argument. I even said black lives don’t matter to them while sharing a stage with Congressman Cummings. Klacik and I certainly come to the solutions from opposite ends but it shows that we do share the common belief that the Democratic Party has been invisible when it comes to helping people in distress, on a systematic level. Of course she is likely to stress business opportunities, tax breaks for the wealthiest so they can trickle down their money to those more unfortunate than them, and of course likely to privatize our public schools because, to them, leadership is incompetent and the unions protect bad teachers.
Capitalism is the primary reason why there is such rampant poverty in, not just Baltimore, but many urban cities that are run by Democrats. Democrats have had near absolute control of American cities going back decades From Wikipedia: Baltimore, since 1947 has had a single Republican mayor and 10 Democratic mayors; For 64 of those 68 years, the city has been run by Democrats. Detroit has had eight Democratic Mayors and no Republicans since 1962 — 53 years. Chicago has had 10 Democrats and no Republicans in 84 years. Philadelphia has had nine Democrats and no Republicans in 63 years. St. Louis, similarly has had nine Democratic mayors and no Republicans in 64 years; Boston has had 12 Democrats and no Republicans in 85 years; Los Angeles has had five Democrats and a single Republican in the 54 years.
Racism is a subset of capitalism. You can have racism without capitalism, but you cannot have capitalism without racism. The need to keep a people down and depressed, economically, and unable to fight back effectively, as simply staying alive is paramount, is Capitalism 101.
The suggestion that the 7th electing a Republican Congresswoman to tackle the problems of Baltimore’s poverty is only to switch one capitalist party for another, and one most likely, due to its far more implicit reliance on racism, to do more harm than any good.
Schools are failing in our urban centers. Funding and support for charter and private schools are bi-partisan. The prison population is exploding, preventing or limiting mostly people of color and the poor from being permitted to take part in society and the work force after incarceration, depressing wages. These are the very people the Democrats try to appeal to, yet have never put ending the War on Drugs, started by Nixon but on steroids with the Democrats, into their platform. The cop and feel team of Biden/Harris will see to it that the War on Drug users continue, with modification to appeal to liberals’ consciences. Over 50% of our federal taxes go to maintaining an empire. Former Congressman Cummings was a strong proponent of our military, especially encouraging his constituents to take advantage of the poverty draft. War is the highest stage of capitalism, as Lenin said. Cummings served it well.
In all of the cities mentioned above, whites and blacks have both shared the mayors’ offices, being both Democrat and Republican. Martin O’Malley, the invisible Democratic candidate for president in 2016, was Baltimore’s last white mayor and who ran on a law and order platform. The last 7 mayors of Philadelphia have been 4 white men and 3 blacks. Boston has never had a black mayor. Since 1961 Los Angeles has had all white mayors, except for one black and one Latino. With Bernie Sanders and very few others, you have to go back to the early part of the 20th century to find anti-capitalist mayors who identify as Socialist.
It’s hard to say when our cities went into the state of decline we’re in now. The GI Bill of Rights after World War Two was successful in creating a vast middle class, but for whites. Many of its provisions did not include black veterans. Federal laws were written by both parties to keep blacks from entering that class, through racist housing laws in particular. Unions have rarely been on the forefront of anti-capitalism action. The leadership restricted black veterans from entering the trades that guaranteed upward mobility. Federal laws made income a primary criteria for welfare assistance, which forced a lot of families to become one-parent households with all its ramifications.
If Black lives mattered to Congress, we would have Medicare for All, an end to the War on Drug users, re-distribution of wealth through higher taxes for the wealthy, school funding not based on property taxes, and an end to our never-ending wars of empire building. If Black lives mattered, we would not be a capitalist nation.
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