Muslim and Arab-American Voters Show Black People How to Exercise Political Power

By Margaret Kimberley

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

Black voters feel trapped in the duopoly but other groups are giving a master class in political courage. The Abandon Biden campaign shows the way.

Face the Nation Host Margaret Brennan: Thasin, you did change your mind on the president. Why?
Thasin: I was a champion for Joe Biden until October 7. I feel he disowned us, disenfranchised us, with his stance on Gaza.
Brennan: What do you mean by that?
Thasin: He’s not listening to us. We’re asking for a cease fire at this time. It’s a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Too many lives have been lost at this time. I was never a single issue voter and in fact I used to argue with people not to be single issue voters but for me this is a deal breaker. Way too many lives have been lost. 
Brennan: When you say “us” you’re Muslim, is that what you mean? You think the Muslim community here feels as you do?
Thasin: Yes. I think the vast majority of Muslims, Arab-Americans, progressives, I identify myself as a progressive, and many people I talk to in my circles are not going to be voting for Joe Biden.

- Michigan Voter Focus Group on CBS news program, Face the Nation

Historically, Black people in this country have allowed themselves to feel trapped by the racialized political duopoly. A feature of U.S. politics is to allow only two parties to play a decisive role in elections and for one of them to be designated as the white people’s party and the other as the Black party. 

Beginning after the civil war and until the 1960s, the democrats were the party of the segregated south, and thus the party for white people generally. Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, became the de facto preference for Black people despite their willingness to shove Black interests under the bus when they felt the need to placate white voters. 

In 1872 Frederick Douglass spoke at the National Convention of the Colored People and famously spoke these words. “For colored men the Republican party is the deck, all outside is the sea.” Douglass and other Black people counseled continued support for the republicans, even when they made deals to withdraw federal troops from the south, or refused to codify the Civil Rights Act of 1875 into law after the Supreme Court declared it to be unconstitutional. 

Democrats were the party of the confederacy and thus could not be countenanced under any circumstance, even republican betrayals.

This dynamic played out for the next 100 years when the two teams made a switch which lasts until today. The last time a majority of white people supported a democrat in a presidential election was 1964. Ever since that time they have given a majority of their votes to republicans and Black people have done likewise with the democrats. 

Unfortunately the role that Black political action played in forcing democrat Lyndon Johnson to advocate for and sign the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Right Act of 1964 into law have been forgotten. Black people won legislative victory through their own efforts in creating a mass movement and a political crisis that brought about change. This era has been fetishized, without any understanding of its real importance and meaning. The truth has been turned on its head, and we are taught that Black people owe loyalty to democrats, when that party should reward loyalty with policies that Black people want to see enacted.

But every group in the country has not been cowed. Voters who identify as Muslims or who have Middle Eastern ancestry have put Joe Biden on notice that his aiding and abetting of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza will cost him politically. Michigan has the largest Arab-American community of any state and plays a pivotal role in presidential elections. Democrats take great care to mobilize voters in this key “swing” state. Hillary Clinton’s failure to do so in 2016 resulted in Donald Trump’s victory there by a small margin of 13,000 votes and he prevailed in the Electoral College when Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were also neglected by the democrats and flipped to the republican column. 

Joe Biden won in Michigan in 2020 by a 154,000 vote margin in a state where 200,000 registered voters identify as Muslim and 300,000 claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa. Michigan is not the only state Biden won by a small margin thanks to Arab and Muslim voters. In Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, and Wisconsin he also owed his victory in part to members of this community.

A group of Muslim leaders in swing states are rightly using their electoral power with the #AbandonBiden campaign. They are not so frightened of a Trump presidency that they have allowed themselves to vote for the man who through his proxy Israel has killed some 24,000 people in Gaza and despite phony claims of “working behind the scenes” shows no inclination to change policy and save lives.

It is true that these communities do not share Black people’s history of enslavement and Jim Crow segregation. As such they have a greater willingness to show independence but there are lessons here for Black people in how to exercise their power.

Joe Biden and every democrat elected in the last 60 years owes his presidency to Black voters. The same is true of politicians in city halls, state legislatures, and in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Black people have political muscle but through a combination of misleadership chicanery and ignorance of the right lessons of history, act as supplicants instead of as political players.  

Arab-Americans have not forgotten Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, when citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen were barred from entering the country. Yet they do not act fearfully despite the fact that Trump is again a candidate for the office he once held and pledges to bring back the ban and even to deport people who protest U.S. policy towards Palestine.

Fortunately the #AbandonBiden campaign has shown no signs of letting up because its leadership knows how to get results and because they refuse to disrespect themselves and their people by rewarding a genocidaire with another term in the white house. How much could Black people achieve with similar determination?

In 2024 and beyond, the words “but Trump” should lose their power. How much has Biden done for Black people in the last three years? The covid era programs of small stimulus payments and the Child Tax Credit are over. Millions of people eligible for Medicaid and SNAP food benefits have been kicked off the rolls in many states with no intervention from the federal government. The pardon for federal marijuana convictions freed no one from jail. Police continue their killing spree with more than 1,300 victims in 2023. Mass incarceration continues as 1 million Black people are locked up, more than anywhere else in the world with the help of the most draconian sentences in the world. Of course Senator Joe Biden bragged about his role in the Clinton era Crime Bill which put so many Black people behind bars. There was good reason not to vote for him in 2020.

As it seems Black people have forgotten how to demonstrate political power, perhaps lessons from other groups are a means of regaining what has been lost. Black people can abandon Biden too, along with all of the democrats who owe their elected office to a group of people they routinely ignore or use for “dog whistle” politics appealing to white voters. 

Donald Trump is not the biggest enemy, he is just the loudest and the least refined. Abandoning Biden and his minions can be a reality which may produce some worthy result. Feeling trapped by the duopoly has been and continues to be a losing proposition.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents . You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter , Bluesky , and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com

State Repression Targets the "Stop Cop City" Movement

[Pictured: Kamau Franklin of Community Movement Builders and other organizers announce a ballot referendum effort at a June 7 press conference in Atlanta.] (Photo: Twitter @Micahinatl)

By Margaret Kimberley

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

Cop City is an effort to ensure that state violence will bring the most draconian methods to bear against Black people. State violence is also being used proactively, in an effort to end opposition to this creation of Atlanta's white ruling class and their errand boys and girls who ostensibly control a fake mecca for Black people.

“The politicians don’t care about the people. They don’t work for the people. They work for corporations, the developers, and the police. The Atlanta City Council ignored the largest mass mobilization ever because the corporate-funded Atlanta Police Foundation controls them.”

— Kamau Franklin, Community Movement Builders

Atlanta, Georgia is no mecca. The idea that it is a “good for Black people” city is a lie. Atlanta is little more than a glorified plantation where powerful white people give directions to the Black people they choose to be overseers. The power of the latter group is severely limited of course. They can always be counted on to act on behalf of the white power structure they serve.

No one should be shocked that members of the Atlanta City Council listened to hours of impassioned testimony from their constituents opposing what they call a Public Safety Training Center yet still voted to approve an initial $31 million expenditure by a vote of 11 to 4. The center is commonly and more accurately known as Cop City and thousands of people have mobilized to keep it from being built.

In the days before the vote the degree of official perfidy was revealed when the public were informed that the estimated cost for the center was more than double what they had been told. The cost to the city is $67 million , and not the $30 million figure that has been stated ever since the project was announced.

The state of Georgia and their Atlanta lackeys swung into action after the budgetary fraud was exposed and arrested three organizers of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund , a bail fund used to support protesters who have been arrested. The city and state had already mobilized brute force, killing one protester, Manuel Paez Teran, with 57 bullet wounds and charging others with terrorism. Before the bail fund arrests, three other organizers were charged with felony intimidation of an officer when they shared already public information which identified the killer police.

Atlanta Solidarity Fund organizers were arrested by a SWAT team and charged with charity fraud and money laundering because they reimbursed themselves for expenses. Judge James Altman released the three on $15,000 bond each. “Paying for camping supplies and the like? I don’t find it very impressive. There’s not a lot of meat on the bones of the allegations that thousands of dollars are going to fund illegal activities.”

But the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia are not alone in their acts of repression. The federal Department of Homeland Security has also weighed in calling protesters “militants” who they say comprise a “violent far-left occupation.” When the DHS report was made public, online access was suddenly removed.

Cop City would be more than a police training center. The 85-acre site would be a mock city, used to train police in “crowd control,” methods. It would be a militarized policing center training law enforcement from around the country. Cop City is a response to the 2020 protests which sprang up across the country after the police killing of George Floyd and the protests in Atlanta which took place after the killing of Rayshard Brooks. The reaction against the new movement was swift and Atlanta’s local oligarchs demanded that their Black figureheads do something to ensure that any further protests be met with the harshest measures possible.

Yet the people of Atlanta weren’t fooled, and they lined up for hours to give testimony before their so-called representatives who don’t really want to hear from them. Atlanta resident Robell Awake spoke for many when he said, “I cannot believe I am standing here, pleading with you not to spend the tax dollars of a Black city, to tear down a forest in a Black neighborhood, to increase the policing and caging of more Black people. All this in a city with Black leadership. It breaks my heart.”

As we have said many times at Black Agenda Report, we don’t have Black political leadership in this country. We have misleadership, a corrupt buffer class who do the bidding of Black people’s enemies while pretending to be our representatives.

The next step in stopping the Cop City scam is to put a referendum on the ballot. Organizers must secure 75,000 signatures from registered voters within the next two months in order to give voters a voice in the process. Direct democracy is the tool, but the same people who use SWAT teams to arrest organizers won’t stop either.

Cities, states, and the federal government will all work together at the behest of the ruling class whenever the people choose to act in favor of their own interests. They will bring terrorism charges, kill protesters, and buy off politicians in order to get what they want. As always, the question is how the masses will respond. Atlantans are ready and they are showing the way.

Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon  and also find it on the Twitter  and Telegram  platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley(at)blackagendareport.com.

Biden Lies at the United Nations

By Margaret Kimberley

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

It takes a special kind of hubris for a president of the United States to speak at the United Nations, the place where international law is supposed to be upheld and defended. Yet the representative of the worst violator of international law predictably shows up every September when the United Nations General Assembly holds its annual session. The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez got it right when he spoke in 2006:

“Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world. I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation, and pillage of the peoples of the world.”

Chavez is no longer with us, and Joe Biden is the third man to serve as U.S. president since George W. Bush was compared to the devil. But the words are as true now as they were then. This year Biden’s speech was replete with the usual drivel about the United States being some sort of guarantor of peace. Among other things, he said that permanent members of the Security Council should “...refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations, to ensure that the Council remains credible and effective.”

Perhaps Biden thinks that the rest of the world has amnesia. Every time the members of UN General Assembly condemn Israeli apartheid it is the U.S. that predictably steps in with a Security Council veto to protect its ally and partner in crime. Twelve of the 14 U.S. vetoes since 2000 were made on behalf of Israel. Any U.S. proposal calling for change in the Security Council structure is intended to weaken China and Russia’s veto power and to bring in its own puppets such as Germany and Japan.

Of course, Russia bashing was the focus of Biden’s speech with false claims of a nuclear threat, unprovoked attack, and accusations of war crimes. He didn’t mention well documented Ukrainian war crimes such as the shelling of civilians in Donetsk. Worse yet, there was no acknowledgement that Ukraine and Russia were negotiating until the U.S. and the U.K. intervened and scuttled the talks. Biden’s speech was full of projection and every condemnation leveled against Russia or Iran or Venezuela was instead an indictment of U.S. behavior in the world.

The world has changed but American administrations don’t. They continue behaving as if the U.S. is still the all-powerful hegemon that will always get what it wants. It does have the world’s reserve currency and the biggest military, but it can’t control the world without doing harm to itself and its allies. The United States cynically used the United Nations to call for a “no fly zone” over Libya, which allowed it to destroy that nation. Partnerships with jihadists brought destruction to Libya and to Syria, causing a humanitarian disaster which displaced millions of people. The 2014 coup against the elected government of Ukraine has turned into all out war. The sanctions targeting Russian gas and oil have raised prices all over the world and damaged European economies more than any others. The ruble has risen in value and the euro has declined. Even hegemons don’t always get their way.

While Biden mouthed platitudes and falsehoods at the United Nations, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met with representatives from China, Cuba, Eritrea, Serbia, Laos, Jordan, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Algeria, Burkina Faso, India, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Mexico among others. So much for Washington’s claims that Russia is an isolated pariah.

While Washington rails against Moscow, it continues to ignore UN votes to end sanctions against Cuba. This year Cuba will again submit a resolution calling on the U.S. to end its trade embargo. During the 2021 vote only the U.S. and Israel voted no. The next vote will have the same result, and reveal Biden’s words, “The United States will always promote human rights and the values enshrined in the U.N. Charter in our own country and around the world,” as a sham.

The United Nations is in serious need of reform. It is part of the Core Group which chooses presidents for Haiti and acts against the will of its people. Biden mentioned Haiti in passing and called for an end to gang violence. But that violence is the direct result of U.S. interventions there. The 75-year history of allowing the permanent Security Council members to dictate to the rest of the world should change. But who should do the changing? Not the U.S., which always has ulterior motives and dirty hands.

Biden did make one valid statement. “Because if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for.” It is unfortunate that the U.S. ignores the consequences of its own actions.

Gentrification and the End of Black Communities

[Pictured: Court Street in Cobble Hill (Brooklyn, NY). Photo by Susan De Vries]

By Margaret Kimberley

Republished from Black Agenda Report.

Brooklyn, New York is the epicenter of gentrification, the displacement of Black people from cities in this country. Recently released census data shows that neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant , which was nearly all Black for decades, no longer has a Black majority. Bedford-Stuyvesant’s white population rose by 30,000 from 2010 to 2020 while its Black population decreased by 22,000.

The devastation has been wrought by finance capital, which has once again upended life for Black people. Money was taken out of the cities in the 1950s and 1960s, creating what was known as “white flight” to the suburbs. Now the same forces have reversed themselves and are putting money back into the cities, and Black people are the losers. Neighborhoods that were once afterthoughts and the butt of jokes are suddenly declared “hot” if real estate speculators target them for change.

The how-to of moving Black people out of a community isn’t difficult at all. The median price for a home anywhere in Brooklyn is now $900,000 . A well-kept brownstone in Crown Heights or Bedford-Stuyvesant can now fetch seven figures. Home purchases which once required living wage employment and thrifty habits now require a small fortune that Black people rarely have.

What is now called gentrification is the latest salvo in a long history of making the Black population disposable and dependent upon the whims of racist reaction and capitalism. Urban renewal, known as Nego removal, destroyed entire communities. Financial institutions used red lining to determine where a mortgage could be obtained. Often these rules were used to keep any Black person out, regardless of financial circumstances.

Those circumstances are usually tenuous. Living wage jobs are no longer plentiful, as the same finance capital interests sent manufacturing jobs to other countries, leaving nothing but low wage jobs or even so-called gig work, which guarantees nothing but the precarity that the system demands.

Gentrification even impacts the criminal justice system. An increasingly white jury pool in Brooklyn means that defendants, mostly people of color, are more likely to be convicted. Civil cases are less likely to be decided in favor of plaintiffs and awards are smaller as the borough’s income and education levels rise.

Generations of culture are being lost, families are dispersed, and even homesellers who can make the proverbial killing are saddened that their good fortune only accelerates the process of displacement. Everyone laments the process but they are silenced because their losses are rarely acknowledged. We are told that people have the right to live where they want. But that right exists only for those with access to lots of money. The average Black working person depends on a salary. Even those with higher incomes don’t have access to cash or to a family legacy of wealth, and they are automatically out of the running.

The problem of course is capitalism itself. Black people shouldn’t be blamed for not pulling themselves by imaginary bootstraps when the paths to success are closed to them by discrimination and when the rules they were told to follow are suddenly changed. Even a college education is no longer a ticket to success. Student loan debt is a burden to people who believed they were helping themselves when they took on what was once a key to success. Black college graduates now start off their lives deeply indebted while also relying on incomes that are less than those of their white counterparts. They are worse off than their parents’ generation and they will be left out of home ownership and other opportunities they thought they would have.

Of course Brooklyn and Harlem are less and less Black. Washington DC, once known as Chocolate City, is now more of a cafe au lait city as its Black population is no longer in the majority. The political system offers no solutions. Real estate interests are big political donors, and they decide who will and who will not be in office. Politicians won’t bite the hands that feed them and people who expected to get what they were promised if they played by the rules are left out of contention.

At the very least we can name and shame the bankers and the developers and the craven politicians. They are causing the deaths of communities and the destruction of a people. There should also be no hesitation in naming racism as the culprit of Black peoples problems. Capitalism and racism make one gigantic, two-headed monster behaving as it always has. No one should shrink from pointing out that fact.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents  . Her work can also be found at patreon.com/margaretkimberley. Ms. Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.