Arrogant' White Liberals Seek to Manage Black Voter Turnout
Posted on Oct 02, 2004 - 12:20 PM by blackvoice Washington
By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent
Money that normally goes to African-American grass-roots groups with a proven track record of successfully turning out the Black vote is being diverted this year to White-managed 527 groups that feel they have a better knowledge of how to turn out the African-American vote than experienced Blacks, a miscalculation that some experts feel could cause Democratic nominee John Kerry a victory on Nov. 2.
"The thing that is criminal about it is that we could lose the
election because we're not putting the resources into the hands of
those who can mobilize the Black vote," says University of Maryland political scientist Ronald Walters. "They're making some serious errors with these resources by not connecting up to the people who can move this full apparatus. This is another form of colonialism – colonialism is about control."
Among the primary groups being crippled is the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation, of which Walters is a board member.
Four years ago, NCBCP, which includes 84 member organizations, was able to raise $3 million for its Unity 2000 campaign for voter
registration, says Melanie Campbell, the group's president and chief executive officer. This year, with a matching number of ad hoc groups, Unity 2004 has struggled to meet its financial goals for registering and turning out the Black vote.
"We're way off from that," says Campbell, who declined to give an
exact figure. "Normally, we would have had all kinds of town hall
meetings. We haven't had any."
The 527 organizations, named for the Internal Revenue Service code that covers their status, are private groups that are allowed to raise unlimited money from unions, corporations, individuals, and
even other 527s for the purpose of influencing political elections.
They were set up to counter the large contributions donors had been making to the Republican Party.
The top 527s includes: the Media Fund ( $28 million); America Coming Together ($27 million); Service Employees International Union ($16 million); American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, ($13 million); and MoveOn.org ($9 million), according to OpenSecrets.org., a site that helps monitor campaign spending.
Black groups are baffled that 527s, which are mostly Democratic-
leaning, hire independent consultants to go in to the Black community and determine how to get out the vote.
Campbell says this insults groups that have been doing this for years.
"We organized ourselves to get more Black people elected, we
organized ourselves to impact the electoral process, we closed the
gap in registration between Blacks and Whites, we closed the gap when it comes to turnout," says Campbell. "Then, all of a sudden, these groups pop up. To me, this is about: Are we going to lose control of trying to empower ourselves? Part of that has to do with having the resources to do what we need to do for our community."
ACT spokesman Patrick Gaspard says neither ACT nor the Media Fund, one of its partners, set out to slight traditional Black
organizations.
"We believe that there are traditional organizations in this country
that have worked these states and these precincts for decades. They have done phenomenal work that has bolstered the ability of Democrats to win," says Gaspard, national field director for ACT. "There isn't anything about our philosophy or our approach that was constructed in response to any kind of deficit that we see in these organizations."
Gaspard says ACT has not contracted with any major voter groups – Black or White – except the Hip Hop Summit Action Network because of its specialized outreach to young African-American voters. For organizational and accountability purposes, he says, ACT has decided to recruit its own people from state to state rather than turn to established groups.
"Everywhere we go, we make sure to hire local talent who, in turn,
hire other local talent and development leadership to go into
communities to do this work. However, we are determined that America Coming Together is its own free standing organizing tool," Gaspard says. "We believe that in order to be able to track and measure and quantify our voter contact, that it makes the most sense for us to be able to run programs that are directly controlled and administered by the organizing leadership that's hired in these states, that's developed in these states."
The bi-partisan McCain-Feingold, Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform act, signed by President Bush in 2002, allows 527s to raise and spend unregulated and unlimited money while political campaigns cannot. Tension between Black grass-root organizers and the 527 controversy peaked weeks ago when Walters sent a scathing letter to Harold Ickes, former Clinton White House aide, who runs the Media Fund.
"Since the 1970s the National Coalition for Black Civic
Participation] has operated Operation Big Vote and in recent years
Black Youth Vote and in this election cycle, the Unity 04 Campaign
has been established, staffed and has attempted to raise funds for
its activities with meager success. So, we are now to understand that The Media Fund, an entity that is completely unknown in the Black community, but which contains some Black PR firms, has a plan for Black messaging and the resources to enact it," Walters wrote.
"But it is a plan that has been drafted outside of our community,
that is to say, without the collective sign-off of any significant
collection of Black leaders. Therefore, why should we accept it and cooperate with it? This is an arrogant and divisive usurpation of power and it is destructive of our efforts that began most recently in the Civil Rights movement where the efforts of Blacks to provide their own leadership in the act of political participation was understood to be the source of their power in the policy system as well."
Gaspard, also speaking for the Media Fund, which works hand-in-hand with ACT, says that Ickes has read Walters' letter.
"We definitely were not at all dismissive of any of the points at all
that he raised in the letter. All I can speak to is the work that
we're doing on the ground every day in these states and in these
communities," Gaspard says. "And we have a tremendous amount of respect for his history, the history of the organizations that he
cites that he's been involved with and the thoughtfulness and
critique in his letter."
Ron Lester is a political consultant to Voices for Working Families,
a small 527 that has raised about $6 million to mobilize Blacks and
women. He says Blacks are particularly upset that ACT is headed by a former ally, AFL-CIO ex-political director Steve Rosenthal.
"They feel as though ACT is kind of infringing on their territory.
They [ACT] want to come into the Black community and do their thing, but they don't want to include the people who have been doing it in the Black community, like Melanie, for 20 years. They want to bypass Melanie and do it on their own. It's ugly," Lester says.
Campbell says NCBCP is investigating alternative financing for Unity 2004 and has established a fund-raising Web site, Unity04donate.org.
"What can we do as a community to try to try to deal with the bigger picture? We want to fund our own politics," she states. "We're going to Black people. It's about the small checks to the big checks. We're calling this a united community appeal."
By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent
Money that normally goes to African-American grass-roots groups with a proven track record of successfully turning out the Black vote is being diverted this year to White-managed 527 groups that feel they have a better knowledge of how to turn out the African-American vote than experienced Blacks, a miscalculation that some experts feel could cause Democratic nominee John Kerry a victory on Nov. 2.
"The thing that is criminal about it is that we could lose the
election because we're not putting the resources into the hands of
those who can mobilize the Black vote," says University of Maryland political scientist Ronald Walters. "They're making some serious errors with these resources by not connecting up to the people who can move this full apparatus. This is another form of colonialism – colonialism is about control."
Among the primary groups being crippled is the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation, of which Walters is a board member.
Four years ago, NCBCP, which includes 84 member organizations, was able to raise $3 million for its Unity 2000 campaign for voter
registration, says Melanie Campbell, the group's president and chief executive officer. This year, with a matching number of ad hoc groups, Unity 2004 has struggled to meet its financial goals for registering and turning out the Black vote.
"We're way off from that," says Campbell, who declined to give an
exact figure. "Normally, we would have had all kinds of town hall
meetings. We haven't had any."
The 527 organizations, named for the Internal Revenue Service code that covers their status, are private groups that are allowed to raise unlimited money from unions, corporations, individuals, and
even other 527s for the purpose of influencing political elections.
They were set up to counter the large contributions donors had been making to the Republican Party.
The top 527s includes: the Media Fund ( $28 million); America Coming Together ($27 million); Service Employees International Union ($16 million); American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, ($13 million); and MoveOn.org ($9 million), according to OpenSecrets.org., a site that helps monitor campaign spending.
Black groups are baffled that 527s, which are mostly Democratic-
leaning, hire independent consultants to go in to the Black community and determine how to get out the vote.
Campbell says this insults groups that have been doing this for years.
"We organized ourselves to get more Black people elected, we
organized ourselves to impact the electoral process, we closed the
gap in registration between Blacks and Whites, we closed the gap when it comes to turnout," says Campbell. "Then, all of a sudden, these groups pop up. To me, this is about: Are we going to lose control of trying to empower ourselves? Part of that has to do with having the resources to do what we need to do for our community."
ACT spokesman Patrick Gaspard says neither ACT nor the Media Fund, one of its partners, set out to slight traditional Black
organizations.
"We believe that there are traditional organizations in this country
that have worked these states and these precincts for decades. They have done phenomenal work that has bolstered the ability of Democrats to win," says Gaspard, national field director for ACT. "There isn't anything about our philosophy or our approach that was constructed in response to any kind of deficit that we see in these organizations."
Gaspard says ACT has not contracted with any major voter groups – Black or White – except the Hip Hop Summit Action Network because of its specialized outreach to young African-American voters. For organizational and accountability purposes, he says, ACT has decided to recruit its own people from state to state rather than turn to established groups.
"Everywhere we go, we make sure to hire local talent who, in turn,
hire other local talent and development leadership to go into
communities to do this work. However, we are determined that America Coming Together is its own free standing organizing tool," Gaspard says. "We believe that in order to be able to track and measure and quantify our voter contact, that it makes the most sense for us to be able to run programs that are directly controlled and administered by the organizing leadership that's hired in these states, that's developed in these states."
The bi-partisan McCain-Feingold, Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform act, signed by President Bush in 2002, allows 527s to raise and spend unregulated and unlimited money while political campaigns cannot. Tension between Black grass-root organizers and the 527 controversy peaked weeks ago when Walters sent a scathing letter to Harold Ickes, former Clinton White House aide, who runs the Media Fund.
"Since the 1970s the National Coalition for Black Civic
Participation] has operated Operation Big Vote and in recent years
Black Youth Vote and in this election cycle, the Unity 04 Campaign
has been established, staffed and has attempted to raise funds for
its activities with meager success. So, we are now to understand that The Media Fund, an entity that is completely unknown in the Black community, but which contains some Black PR firms, has a plan for Black messaging and the resources to enact it," Walters wrote.
"But it is a plan that has been drafted outside of our community,
that is to say, without the collective sign-off of any significant
collection of Black leaders. Therefore, why should we accept it and cooperate with it? This is an arrogant and divisive usurpation of power and it is destructive of our efforts that began most recently in the Civil Rights movement where the efforts of Blacks to provide their own leadership in the act of political participation was understood to be the source of their power in the policy system as well."
Gaspard, also speaking for the Media Fund, which works hand-in-hand with ACT, says that Ickes has read Walters' letter.
"We definitely were not at all dismissive of any of the points at all
that he raised in the letter. All I can speak to is the work that
we're doing on the ground every day in these states and in these
communities," Gaspard says. "And we have a tremendous amount of respect for his history, the history of the organizations that he
cites that he's been involved with and the thoughtfulness and
critique in his letter."
Ron Lester is a political consultant to Voices for Working Families,
a small 527 that has raised about $6 million to mobilize Blacks and
women. He says Blacks are particularly upset that ACT is headed by a former ally, AFL-CIO ex-political director Steve Rosenthal.
"They feel as though ACT is kind of infringing on their territory.
They [ACT] want to come into the Black community and do their thing, but they don't want to include the people who have been doing it in the Black community, like Melanie, for 20 years. They want to bypass Melanie and do it on their own. It's ugly," Lester says.
Campbell says NCBCP is investigating alternative financing for Unity 2004 and has established a fund-raising Web site, Unity04donate.org.
"What can we do as a community to try to try to deal with the bigger picture? We want to fund our own politics," she states. "We're going to Black people. It's about the small checks to the big checks. We're calling this a united community appeal."
posted by Robert at 9:01 AM
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