In the wake of the previous week’s discussions shaquanda cotton and black bloggers, I thought I’d end the week with a couple of Nation articles that I found interesting:
I had the chance to interview Mayor Coleman A. Young the year he passed away. When I asked him about the role the black upper class played in his first election, he scoffed and talked about what he called “ass power.” For him the thing that got him the election was folks willing to go door to door to register people to vote, door to door to get people out to vote.
Ass power.
Black working class people in Detroit tended to have it. Black upper class men and women tended not to have it. Now there are some things that black men and women in the upper strata can give that black working class folk cannot–money, professional services, etc. But if we’re talking about building politics from the ground up, ass power is essential. Engaging people who had previously not been engaged in politics is also essential.
For the first time in the modern era more of our nation’s poor are concentrated in the suburbs rather than in the cities. Over the long haul with the right type of political activism this could lead to both a partisan shift away from the GOP, and an ideological shift to the left. When suburban folks get to the point where the services they need cannot be provided for at the suburb, county, or state level, perhaps they’ll look to the federal government for significant intervention. There are other options, but I don’t even want to give them weight by linking to them. (Think Germany around the 1920s.)
Hey Lester.
That’s interesting about the timing of when yoiu interviewed the late Mayor Young. I too was fortuinate enough to be able to spend several hours with him about a yeare before he passed. At the time I hadn’t been living in Detroit for much more than a year.
Anyway, about “ass power.” Very strong point, as the most recent mayoral election in Detroit proved. Former Deputy Mayor Freman Hendrix was absolutely confident he had the thing won, and the polls seemed to bear him out up until about a few weeks before the election when his support started to evaporate. Those last few night before Election Day, it was Kilpatrick and his troops who definitely called on the “ass power”, bringing out folks who normally never show up at the polls.
One of the most significant untold stories of that election is why Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Minister Louis Farrakhan all felt Detroit was so critical – and that it was so crucial for Kilpatrick to win – that they all came to rtown to campaign for Kilpatrick. Some in the mainstream media joked about it and wondered what they were doing here. Like they got lost or something.
Believe me. They were not lost. And there was a reason why they believed so strongly that Hendrix could not be allowed to win.
Doc suffering is a good cataylist,to find common ground
Bottom power is Obama appeal. Folks want to meet him. While they are going door to door. They want him to meet them in the field.
Obama is appealing to those folks in the surburbs. And he is not waiting for the African American community to decide if he is for real.
Last I checked, he had a significant number of black supporters. The only people who don’t know if he’s for real is Debra Dickerson and Stanley Crouch.