Posted at socialism.com:

In response to a rigged political system, New York City FSP Organizer Stephen Durham and feminist immigrant rights advocate Christina López are running a national write-in campaign.

Inroducing the FSP candidates:

Stephen Durham for president

Stephen Durham brings abundant experience and a generous heart to the electoral arena. Dedicated to changing conditions at their root, he is a lifelong radical in the best sense of the word.

In the 1970s and ’80s Durham, now 64, was the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) organizer in Los Angeles; he has since guided the New York City branch.

From the party’s storefront in Central Harlem, it’s a short subway ride to the international heart of capitalism. Durham has ridden that train many a time to confront the corrupt financial elite — in recent months, often to march with Occupy Wall Street and conduct teach-ins on economics.

Durham was radicalized as a student and campus worker at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), where he participated in the movement against the Vietnam War and became a conscientious objector. He also stood shoulder to shoulder with students of color in the historic battle for Third World Studies at UCB.

As a pioneering queer activist, he took part in the first national lesbian and gay conference in 1969. A consistent advocate of women’s rights and supporter of female leadership, Durham fights to keep feminist issues up front in all the movements.

Durham became a union militant while working as a waiter in California and then New York City. He provided rank-and-file leadership in the 1985 NYC Hotel Trades Council strike by 16,000 workers, predominantly people of color, women, and immigrants.

Durham’s long involvement in Latin America began during high school as an exchange student to Brazil during the military dictatorship. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, he has traveled in Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, building bonds and joint work with other leftists and revolutionaries.

Running for New York State Assembly in 1998, Durham campaigned door to door in the largely Latino and African American 71st District. His campaign was endorsed by Puerto Rican activist Father Luis Barrios, longtime Harlem radical Yuri Kochiyama, former state Assemblywoman Marie Runyon, and Haitian immigrant rights advocate Ray LaForest, among others.

A thinker as well as a doer, Durham has written on topics from the AIDS crisis to the Cuban Revolution, from freeing Lynne Stewart to the environmental disaster of hydraulic fracking.

Now Durham brings his global perspective and decades of valuable political experience to a working-class campaign for president.

Christina López for vice president

Christina López is a dynamic, eloquent Chicana from the barrio in Phoenix, whose working-class family has roots in the Southwest that predate U.S. borders.

She has been an organizer since her youth. As a member of the Chicano student group MEChA, she worked against a racist English-only law in Arizona.

After moving to Seattle, López was drawn to the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) by its emphasis on fighting for racial liberation as an essential component of building class solidarity. She has spread this message and challenged racism through extensive work defending immigrant rights, affirmative action, and freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Her deep involvement in the immigrant rights upsurge of 2006 and 2007 included opposing the profoundly flawed “guest worker” bill. She has spearheaded protests against police brutality and worked with Somali women to protest FBI raids.

In jobs ranging from production at Revlon Cosmetics to county court clerk and library associate, López has been a member of several unions including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.

Recently her activism in the Occupy movement has extended from Philadelphia to Seattle, where she helped pass a “cop-free zone” resolution at the general assembly.

Today, at 43, López is Seattle Radical Women (RW) president. She has been key to building RW’s Sisters Organize for Survival campaign, which has fought state budget cuts and layoffs of public workers for the past three years. Radical Women is affiliated with FSP on the basis of a shared socialist feminist program.

López battles for reproductive rights as a passionate feminist of color and led RW’s collaboration with Black feminists in Jackson, Miss., to defend the last abortion clinic in the state. She has pinpointed the special impact of war on women and children and the need for the anti-war movement to prioritize this issue.

She is the author of the forthcoming RW position paper “Estamos en la Lucha: Immigrant Women Light the Fires of Resistance,” which focuses on the impact of U.S. immigration policies on women and children and highlights the central role of immigrant women in this country and internationally.

Her passion for racial justice helps her guide the National Comrades of Color Caucus, a joint caucus of the FSP and RW.

As candidate for vice president, López will be a fierce partisan of the downtrodden.

Press release:

Freedom Socialist Party launches presidential write-in campaign centered on bold working-class solutions

This election year, the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) is running New Yorker Stephen Durham for U.S. president and Seattleite Christina López for vice president in an energetic national write-in campaign.
Says Durham, 64, “The FSP ticket is a chance for people to vote not only against something, but for something. The campaign is thrilled to be giving people a way to send a strong protest message, find new kindred souls, and strengthen our organizing together for the future we want.”

Over the past three years, charges Durham, “The Democratic and Republican parties have done nothing but cooperate in forcing workers and the poor to pay the costs of the Great Recession caused by the banks and Wall Street. President Obama may play to the crowd by criticizing the ‘bad apple’ corporations, as he did in his State of the Union address. But the facts show that the program of corporate coddling, which creates austerity for the masses, is completely bipartisan.”

Vice presidential candidate López, 43, explains the campaign’s goals: “We are encouraging people to register a protest against both the unjust economic system and the rigged electoral process that keeps it in place. And we want to generate discussion and action around solutions for people’s immediate survival and for changing the system for good. We know it can be done! But it means creating a grass-roots, multiracial move- ment – one that prioritizes the issues of people who are hurting most, for example immigrants, single mothers and their children, and Black teens trying to enter a dismal job market. We have great momentum from last year’s spirit of rebellion to build on.”

The FSP campaign platform calls for taxing corporate wealth, ending all U.S. military involvement abroad, and creating full employment through a massive public jobs program and reducing the standard workweek to 30 hours with no cut in pay. The campaign also stands for bringing back and expanding social services, restoring civil liberties, and a host of other measures designed to eliminate poverty and discrimination and raise workers’ standard of living.

Durham and López are respected activists with a wealth of experience gained fighting for reforms like these while popularizing socialist ideas and the need for radical change. Durham, organizer of FSP’s New York City branch based in Harlem, is a gay rights pioneer with a strong union back- ground. A student and analyst of international affairs, he has traveled extensively in Latin America. López is an immigrant rights champion and the organizer for Seattle Radical Women. As organizer, she has helped lead a feminist campaign of women and men against budget cuts in Washington state for the last three years.

According to campaign manager Doug Barnes, the socialist feminist FSP is taking the unconventional route of a write-in campaign because corporate funding of the two major parties and restrictive ballot access laws stack the deck against minor parties so severely. These hurdles, he notes, are compounded by mainstream media dismissal of alternative candidates, resulting in presidential debates that almost entirely avoid topics like the social costs of war or increasing repression against political dissenters.

In one state, California, where the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) electoral alliance already has ballot status, Durham will compete to be PFP’s presidential candidate.

The Durham/López campaign launches this week with a candidate Web video, position statements, Facebook at www.facebook.com/VoteSocialism2012, Twitter @VoteSocialism, and featured articles in the Freedom Socialist newspaper. With the help of volunteers, the FSP will be spreading the news and ideas of the campaign widely. The Freedom Socialist 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee is planning for college and other speaking engagements, Skype presentations, fundraisers, and more activities around the country.

Freedom Socialist 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee
4710 University Way NE, Ste. 100
Seattle, WA 98105
206-985-4621
VoteSocialism@gmail.com

Independent Political Report

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 20th December 2011

Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among think tanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?

In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

Cartoon by Barry Deutsch @ Lefty Cartoons

Right-wing libertarianism recognizes few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others. In the UK it is forcefully promoted by groups like the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange. Their conception of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed.

So why have we been been so slow to challenge this concept of liberty? I believe that one of the reasons is as follows. The great political conflict of our age – between neocons and the millionaires and corporations they support on one side and social justice campaigners and environmentalists on the other – has been mischaracterised as a clash between negative and positive freedoms.

These freedoms were most clearly defined by Isaiah Berlin in his essay of 1958, Two Concepts of Liberty. It is a work of beauty: reading it is like listening to a gloriously crafted piece of music. I will try not to mangle it too badly.

Put briefly and crudely, negative freedom is the freedom to be or to act without interference from other people. Positive freedom is freedom from inhibition: it’s the power gained by transcending social or psychological constraints. Berlin explained how positive freedom had been abused by tyrannies, particularly by the Soviet Union. It portrayed its brutal governance as the empowerment of the people, who could achieve a higher freedom by subordinating themselves to a collective single will.

Rightwing libertarians claim that greens and social justice campaigners are closet communists trying to resurrect Soviet conceptions of positive freedom. In reality the battle mostly consists of a clash between negative freedoms.

As Berlin noted, “no man’s activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way. ‘Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows’”. So, he argued, some people’s freedom must sometimes be curtailed “to secure the freedom of others.” In other words, your freedom to swung your fist ends where my nose begins. The negative freedom not to have our noses punched is the freedom that green and social justice campaigns, exemplified by the Occupy movement, exist to defend.

Berlin also shows that freedom can intrude upon other values, such as justice, equality or human happiness. “If the liberty of myself or my class or nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system which promotes this is unjust and immoral.” It follows that the state should impose legal restraints upon freedoms which interfere with other people’s freedoms – or on freedoms which conflict with justice and humanity.

These conflicts of negative freedom were summarized in one of the greatest poems of the 19th Century, which could be seen as the founding document of British environmentalism. In The Fallen Elm, John Clare describes the felling of the tree he loved, presumably by his landlord, that grew beside his home. “Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom’s ways/So thy old shadow must a tyrant be./Thou’st heard the knave, abusing those in power,/Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free.”

The landlord was exercising his freedom to cut the tree down. In doing so, he was intruding upon Clare’s freedom to delight in the tree, whose existence enhanced his life. The landlord justifies this destruction by characterizing the tree as an impediment to freedom: his freedom, which he conflates with the general liberty of humankind. Without the involvement of the state (which today might take the form of a tree preservation order) the powerful man could trample the pleasures of the powerless man. Clare then compares the felling of the tree with further intrusions on his liberty. “Such was thy ruin, music-making elm;/The right of freedom was to injure thine:/As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm/In freedom’s name the little that is mine.”

But rightwing libertarians do not recognize this conflict. They speak, like Clare’s landlord, as if the same freedom affects everybody in the same way. They assert their freedom to pollute, exploit, even – among the gun nuts – to kill, as if these were fundamental human rights. They characterize any attempt to restrain them as tyranny. They refuse to see that there is a clash between the freedom of the pike and the freedom of the minnow.

Last week, on an internet radio channel called The Fifth Column, I debated climate change with Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas, one of the right-wing libertarian groups which rose from the ashes of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Claire Fox is a feared interrogator on the BBC show The Moral Maze. Yet when I asked her a simple question – “do you accept that some people’s freedoms intrude upon other people’s freedoms?” – I saw an ideology shatter like a windscreen. I used the example of a Romanian lead smelting plant I had visited in 2000, whose freedom to pollute is shortening the lives of its neighbors. Surely the plant should be regulated in order to enhance the negative freedoms – freedom from pollution, freedom from poisoning – of its neighbors? She tried several times to answer it, but nothing coherent emerged which would not send her crashing through the mirror of her philosophy.

Modern libertarianism is the disguise adopted by those who wish to exploit without restraint. It pretends that only the state intrudes on our liberties. It ignores the role of banks, corporations and the rich in making us less free. It denies the need for the state to curb them in order to protect the freedoms of weaker people. This bastardized, one-eyed philosophy is a con trick, whose promoters attempt to wrong-foot justice by pitching it against liberty. By this means they have turned “freedom” into an instrument of oppression.

Democratic Blog News

Press Release
For Immediate Release
Friday, May 27, 2011

Libertarians say restore freedom, repeal Patriot Act

WASHINGTON – Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle issued the following statement today:

“Yesterday, Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined hands to renew several provisions of the Patriot Act. These provisions are unconstitutional and violate our right to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.

“These provisions should be repealed, and if they’re not repealed, they ought to be ruled unconstitutional by the courts.

“Anyone who believes that Democrats care more about civil liberties than Republicans ought to be disillusioned by this renewal. It has become painfully clear that the Obama administration is indistinguishable from the George W. Bush administration.

“The plain injustice of these search provisions is compounded by the secrecy that surrounds them. In some cases, Americans — even members of Congress — aren’t permitted to know the legal interpretations that govern how these searches may be implemented. And of course there is the infamous ‘library records’ provision, which prohibits targets from telling anyone that they were ordered to turn over records to the government.

“I don’t believe that these violations of our rights are making us any safer. I think it’s security theater. And I’m certainly reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s words, ‘Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’

“Our Constitution guarantees our rights. It doesn’t make an exception for ‘fear of terrorists.’ It’s time to end these violations of our rights, and repeal the Patriot Act.

“We can never perfectly protect ourselves from foreigners who hate us. One useful thing we can do is to try to stop antagonizing foreigners. Our government should stop invading and bombing their countries and stationing troops in them. It’s time for a non-interventionist foreign policy.”

For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.

The LP is America’s third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets, civil liberties, and peace. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party at our website.

Independent Political Report

Ballot Access News:

On January 31, Peace & Freedom Party candidate Daniel Frederick filed a lawsuit in state court in Sacramento, contesting the interpretation and constitutionality of the California Secretary of State’s rules for candidates who choose to file a petition in lieu of a filing fee, rather than paying the filing fee. The lawsuit especially contests the rules for special elections, which frequently give candidates only one or two days after the Governor has called the special election to complete these petitions. Furthermore, that problem (which is an old problem in California, for special elections) is compounded by the severe increase in the number of signatures in lieu of filing fee, caused by the Secretary of State’s interpretation of Proposition 14 and its implementing legislation.

In the past, candidates who are members of small qualified parties needed 150 signatures in lieu of a filing fee for any partisan office, but now they need 1,500 to run for Assembly. The case is Frederick v Bowen, 34-2011-80000773-cu-wm-gds. It will be heard by Judge Kinney in Sacramento Superior Court. Frederick wishes to run for the Assembly in the 4th district. A special election is being held there because the seat is vacant. It is vacant because Assemblymember Ted Gaines, who won that seat in November 2010, recently resigned because earlier this year he won a special election to the State Senate in the First District. That seat, in turn, had been vacant because State Senator Dave Cox had died on July 13, 2010, in the middle of his term.

Independent Political Report

WASHINGTON, DC — Green Party leaders called the attacks on Wikileaks by the US government a direct and deliberate assault on the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press.
“The war on Wikileaks may set a precedent for the treatment of journalists who expose government wrong-doing,” said Carl Romanelli of the Pennsylvania Green Party. [...]
Green Party Watch

 

COMMEMORATION OF JUNETEENTH – THE CELEBRATION OF BLACK FREEDOM By Frances Rice As we celebrate Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, it is fitting that we pause to recognize the origin of this important part of our African American heritage. June 19th marks the day in 1865 when word reached blacks in Texas that slavery in the United States had been abolished.  More than two years earlier, on January 1, 1863, Republican President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Delivered during the American Civil War, this proclamation ordered the freeing of all slaves in states that were rebelling against Union forces.  The proclamation had little effect in Texas, where there were few Union troops to enforce the order. News of the proclamation officially reached Texas on June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger, backed by nearly 2,000 troops, arrived in the city of Galveston and publicly announced that slavery in the United States had ended.  Republicans had passed the Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865 that was ratified on December 6, 1865 to abolish slavery in the United States. Reactions among newly freed slaves ranged from shock and disbelief to jubilant celebration.  That day has been known ever since as Juneteenth, a name probably derived from the slang combination of the words June and nineteenth. Juneteenth commemorations began in Texas in 1866.  Within a few years they had spread to other states and became an annual tradition, celebrating freedom for blacks in addition to many other themes, including education, self-improvement, African American accomplishments throughout history, and tolerance and respect for all cultures. The racial divisiveness prevalent today would not exist if the Democrats in control of the Southern states had left African Americans alone at the moment in history when blacks were freed from slavery and the Juneteenth celebrations began.  Instead Democrats set for themselves the horrendous task of keeping blacks in virtual slavery. Southern Democrats passed discriminatory Black Codes in 1865 to suppress, restrict, and deny blacks the same privileges as whites.  The Codes forced blacks to serve as apprentices to their former slave masters. In 1866, the Ku Klux Klan was started by Democrats to lynch and terrorize Republicans, black and white, and the Ku Klux Klan became the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party. To counter the discriminatory and terrorizing actions by Democrats, Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. Further, the Fourteenth Amendment pushed by Republicans was ratified in1868 that granted blacks citizenship.  The Fifteenth Amendment also pushed by Republicans was ratified in 1870 that granted blacks the right to vote. Undaunted, Democrats passed discriminatory Jim Crow Laws in 1875 to restrict the rights of blacks to use public facilities.  In response, Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which prohibited racial discrimination in public facilities. Shamefully, Democrats fought against anti-lynching laws, and when the Democrats regained control of Congress in 1892, they passed the Repeal Act of 1894 that overturned civil right laws enacted by Republicans.  Further, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Democrats and issued a ruling in the case of “Plessy v. Ferguson” in 1896 that established the “separate but equal” doctrine.  That opinion stated that it was not a violation of the Constitution to have separate facilities for blacks.  It took Republicans nearly six decades to finally get the civil rights laws of the 1950′s and 1960′s passed over the objection of the Democrats. To advance civil rights for blacks, Republicans started the NAACP on February 12, 1909, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.  The first black head of the NAACP was black Republican James Weldon Johnson who became general secretary in 1920 and wrote the lyrics to the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.   Republicans also founded the HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) because Democrats were trying to prevent blacks from getting a good education. During the civil rights era of the 1960′s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought to stop Democrats from denying civil rights to blacks.  It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Republican as has been affirmed by his niece, Dr. Alveda C. King in a video posted on YouTube. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have joined the Democratic Party, the party of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation. Dr. King fought against Democrat Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor in Birmingham who let loose vicious dogs and turned skin-burning fire hoses on black civil rights demonstrators. Democrat Georgia Governor Lester Maddox famously brandished ax handles to prevent blacks from patronizing his restaurant.   Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in front of the Alabama schoolhouse in 1963 and thundered, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”  All of these racist Democrats remained Democrats until the day they died. The so-called “Dixiecrats” remained Democrats and did not migrate to the Republican Party.  The Dixiecrats were a group of Southern Democrats who, in the 1948 national election, ran a third party ticket that supported segregation and Jim Crow laws passed by Democrats.  Even so, they continued to be Democrats for all local and state elections, as well as for all future national elections. Unknown today is the fact that the Democratic Party supported the Topeka, Kansas school board in the 1954 “Brown v. Topeka Board of Education” Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren who was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.  This landmark decision declared that the “separate but equal” doctrine violated the 14th Amendment and ended school segregation. After the Brown decision, Democrat Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus tried to prevent desegregation of a Little Rock public school.  President Eisenhower sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate the schools and pushed through the 1957 Civil Rights Act.  In 1958, Eisenhower established a permanent US Civil Rights Commission that had been rejected by prior Democrat presidents, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ignored today is the fact that it was Roosevelt who started blacks on the path to dependency on government handouts during the Great Depression with his “New Deal” that turned out to be a bad deal for blacks.  Even though Roosevelt received the vote of many blacks, Roosevelt banned black American newspapers from the military because he was convinced the newspapers were communists. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military.  Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military. Little known is the fact that it was Republican Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois, not Democrat President Lyndon Johnson, who pushed through the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.  In fact, Dirksen was instrumental in the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1968.  The chief opponents of the 1964 Civil Rights Act were Democrat Senators Sam Ervin, Albert Gore, Sr. and Robert Byrd, a former official in the Ku Klux Klan who is still in Congress.  None of these racist Democrats became Republicans. Democrats ignore the pivotal role played by Senator Dirksen in obtaining passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, while heralding President Johnson as a civil rights advocate for signing the bill. Notably, in his 4,500-word State of the Union Address delivered on January 4, 1965, Johnson mentioned scores of topics for federal action, but only thirty five words were devoted to civil rights.  He did not mention one word about voting rights.  Information about Johnson’s anemic civil rights policy positions can be found in the “Public Papers of the President, Lyndon B. Johnson,” 1965, vol. 1, p.1-9.. In their campaign to unfairly paint the Republican Party today as racists, Democrats point to President Johnson’s prediction that there would be an exodus from the Democratic Party because of Johnson’s signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Omitted from the Democrats’ rewritten history is what Johnson actually meant by his prediction.  Johnson’s statement was not made out of a concern that racist Democrats would suddenly join the Republican Party that was fighting for the civil rights of blacks.  Instead, Johnson feared that the racist Democrats would again form a third party, such as the short-lived States Rights Democratic Party.  In fact, Alabama’s Democrat Governor George C. Wallace in 1968 started the American Independent Party that attracted other racist candidates, including Democrat Atlanta Mayor (later Governor of Georgia) Lester Maddox. Democrat President John F. Kennedy is also lauded as a civil rights advocate.  In reality, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil rights Act while he was a senator.  After he became president, John F. Kennedy opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.  To his credit, Republican President Ronald Reagan made Dr. King’s birthday a federal holiday, ignoring how the Democrats had smeared Dr. King. Democrats denounced Senator Trent Lott for his remarks about Senator Strom Thurmond.  However, there was silence when Democrat Senator Christopher Dodd praised Senator Byrd, a former official in the Ku Klux Klan, as someone who would have been “a great senator for any moment.”  Senator Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan and, after he became a Republican, Thurmond defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats. Democrats today castigate Republican Senator Barry Goldwater as anti-black.  However a review of Senator Barry Goldwater’s record shows that he was a Libertarian, not a racist.  Goldwater was a member of the Arizona NAACP and was involved in desegregating the Arizona National Guard. Goldwater also supported the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1960, as well as the constitutional amendment banning the poll tax.  His opposition to the more comprehensive Civil Rights Act of 1964 was based on his libertarian views about government.  Goldwater believed that the 1964 Act, as written, unconstitutionally extended the federal government’s commerce power to private citizens, furthering the government’s efforts to “legislate morality” and restrict the rights of employers. It is instructive to read the entire text of Goldwater’s 1964 speech at the 28th Republican National Convention, accepting the nomination for president that is available from the Arizona Historical Foundation.  By the end of his career, Goldwater was one of the most respected members of either party and was considered a stabilizing influence in the Senate.  Senator Goldwater’s speech may be found also on the Internet. In the arsenal of the Democrats is a condemnation of Republican President Richard Nixon for his so-called “Southern Strategy.”  These same Democrats expressed no concern when the racially segregated South voted solidly for Democrats for over 100 years, yet unfairly deride Republicans because of the thirty-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party that began in the 1970′s.  Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was an effort on his part to get fair-minded people in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values and were discriminating against blacks.  Georgia did not switch until 2004, and Louisiana was controlled by Democrats until the election of Republican Governor Bobby Jindal in 2007. As the co-architect of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”, Pat Buchanan provided a first-hand account of the origin and intent of that strategy in a 2002 article that can be found on the Internet. In that article, Buchanan wrote that when Nixon kicked off his historic comeback in 1966 with a column about the South (written by Buchanan), Nixon declared that the Republican Party would be built on a foundation of states rights, human rights, small government and a strong national defense, and leave it to the “party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace to squeeze the last ounce of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.” During the 1966 campaign, Nixon was personally thanked by Dr. King for his help in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957.  Nixon also endorsed all Republicans, except the members of the John Birch Society. Notably, the enforcement of affirmative action began with Richard Nixon’s 1969 Philadelphia Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher who became know as “the father of affirmative action enforcement”) that set the nation’s first goals and timetables.  Nixon was also responsible for the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1970′s. Fletcher, as president of the United Negro College Fund, coined the phrase “the mind is a terrible thing to waste.”  Fletcher was also one of the original nine plaintiffs in the famous “Brown v. Topeka Board of Education” decision.  Fletcher briefly pursued a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1995. Nixon began his merit-based affirmative action program to overcome the harm caused by Democrat President Woodrow Wilson who, after he was elected in 1912, kicked blacks out of federal government jobs and prevented blacks from obtaining federal contracts.  Also, while Wilson was president and Congress was controlled by the Democrats, more discriminatory bills were introduced in Congress than ever before in our nation’s history.  Today, Democrats have turned affirmative action into an unfair quota system that even most blacks do not support. For more details on the true history of civil rights please read the book “Blacks, Whites and Racist Democrats: The Untold History of Race and Politics within the Democratic Party from 1792-2009″ by Wayne Perryman. Just as Democrats built their economic power base on the backs of poor blacks during the time of slavery, Democrats today have built their political power base on the backs of poor blacks today. As author Michael Scheuer stated, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S’s:  slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism. Democrats have been running black communities for the past 40 years, and the socialist policies of the Democrats have destroyed the economic and social fabric of black communities.   A wise man once wrote that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It is way past time for blacks to end their unfounded loyalty to the Democratic Party, stop having their vote taken for granted and seize control over their own destiny. Only then will blacks be truly free. Frances Rice is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, a lawyer and chairman of the National Black Republican Association.  She can be contacted at: www.NBRA.info

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