The Black Panther vs The Corporate Candidate-gctid52454

[Agya Yaw]

The Black Panther vs The Corporate Candidate

     By Glen Ford
Submitted by Glen Ford on Tue, 06/19/2012 - 23:41

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The corporate media are  screaming like banshees in fear that former Black Panther Charles Barron  might win a seat in Congress. Their preferred Black politico is Hakeem  Jeffries, a charter school supporter flush with corporate funds. "The  media demonization machine has kicked into high gear on Charles Barron,  with the New York Times  calling him a 'showboat' and 'provocateur.'" But of course, that's what  happens when rich white men claim the privilege of choosing Black  leadership.
       
The Black Panther vs The Corporate Candidate
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"The media demonization machine has kicked into high gear on Charles Barron."

There might yet be a  Black Panther in the U.S. Congress. I don't mean a former Panther like  Congressman Bobby Rush, from Chicago. Rush crossed definitively over to  the other side back in 2005, when he became a key ally of the  telecommunications industry, for which he was rewarded with a $1 million grant [8] from AT&T for a community technology center with his name on it.

Charles Barron, on the  other hand, is a say-it-loud-and-proud veteran of the New York chapter  of the Panther Party, and a city councilman from Brooklyn since 2002.  He's going after the congressional seat being vacated by Edolphus Towns,  a rather conservative Black politician who, nevertheless, has endorsed  Charles Barron. Barron has also won the backing of the largest union of  city workers.

The big corporate money  is riding on State Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who ingratiated himself  to the fat cats with his support for charter schools. Wall Streeters are  the real power behind school privatization, and they love Jeffries with  a passion that has sometimes proven embarrassing [9].  He's had to reject hundreds of thounited snakesnds of dollars in support from a  charter school advocacy group bankrolled by billionaire Mayor Michael  Bloomberg. But, there's plenty more money where that comes from.

"Hakeem Jeffries ingratiated himself to the fat cats with his support for charter schools."
 
The corporate media are  all giddily comparing Jeffries to business-friendly Black politicians  like President Obama and Newark Mayor Cory Booker. The Booker comparison  is accurate. Cory Booker was an obscure and ineffective first-term  Newark city councilman until he hooked up with the far-right moneybags  at the Bradley Foundation, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That's where Booker,  a hardcore advocate of private school vouchers and charters, found the  cash and corporate connections to take on a four-term incumbent mayor,  in 2002. He spent twice as much as the mayor, but still lost the first  time around, winning four years later with the universal support of  corporate media.
 
If Hakeem Jeffries is  Cory Booker – and he certainly draws his funding from the same sources –  then Charles Barron is Cynthia McKinney, of Atlanta, who was called  everything but a child of god by the massed national corporate press  when she was unseated by a big money-backed candidate, in 2002. The  media demonization machine has kicked into high gear on Charles Barron,  with the New York Times calling him a "showboat" and "provocateur [10]." The New York Post says Barron is a racial demagogue [11] – which means he has a strong disdain for white supremacy.
 
Since Cory Booker's first  race for mayor in 2002 – and then, on a much larger scale, with the  rise of Barack Obama – corporations and their media have exercised  unprecedented influence on Black politics, down to the local level. They  fund the Black misleadership class. But the moneymen haven't bought  Charles Barron, and that's why they're in a panic over what might happen  in the June 26 primary.
 
If Black folks understood their own interests, every New York Times  endorsement, every Wall Street dollar that goes to candidates like  Hakeem Jeffries, should translate to a vote for someone like Charles  Barron – who is a Panther, still.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
                                        http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20120620_gf_Barron.mp3

FYI - BARRON LOST THE PRIMARY BY A WIDE MARGIN. - yaw