Unmasked

Rosa Clemente takes on Democratic Party

She is a South Bronx, New York, native. An American community organizer, independent journalist, and hip-hop activist who, in 2008, ran as Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney’s vice presidential running mate. Rosa Alicia Clemente is also a graduate of the University of Albany and Cornell University; and in early 2019, was engaged in doctoral studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst.   

This week she appeared on KPFA’s “Letters and Politics” with host Mitch Jeserich.

These are some of her thoughts from an earlier period.

In five years working as an aide at the New York State Assembly, Clemente wrote in 2016, “I got to know the underbelly of … New York State politics” and particularly “how the Democratic Party functioned overall.

It is not good.

Everything I had been taught about this party was a fallacy.”

In 2000 Clemente left the Democratic Party.

H

er appraisal (my minor edit)

Democrats of the 1940s were “Dixiecrats,” she recalled, who rebranded themselves in later years to appear “progressive.” The Politics of sometimes Democrat/sometimes Independent politician Bernard Sanders, though neither socialist nor progressive, fails to garner support of the party claiming “to be for the people,” the contemporary Democratic Party.

These are some of the heavy-hitters of the Party’s True Face.

President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton and his “trusted advisor, confidant, crime bill proponent attacking (her words) “super-predators,” Hillary Rodham Clinton

• Pushed Democrats back to “center right” and signed “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act” (1994) ensuring imprisonment of poor people, 
• Welfare reform (1996) gutting “safety net for poor and working families”
• Deregulation of Wall Street
• NAFTA “ushering in a modern era of free trade” with disastrous consequences “for countries and people all over the world.”

President Barack Hussein Obama

• Endless engagement in war
• Increased (killer) drone use,
• Crackdown on whistle blowers,
• Failure to close U.S. Prison at Guantanamo Bay,
• Affordable Care Act leaving millions of Americans without any form of healthcare.
• Most deportations of any president in American history
• Ignored the island of Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican American citizens but signed a bill “putting in place a financial control board that will stifle any opportunity for the island to rebuild its economy on its own terms”
• Substantive “silence and inaction” [not to mention incompetence and cowardice (my words)] giving rise to national “uprisings”

Presidential Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton armed with

• Slick rhetoric coupled with
• “Strong and deep ties to the corporate and military industrial complex
• Skilled propaganda machine
• Funders and tools of war and economic suppression.

S

ome Characteristics of an improved political system 

Clemente hopes for

• Representative of by and for the people
• Parties: a creation of the people
• No kettling without escape, options, or place to go
• Open to alternative parties and movements

I do not consider Rosa Clemente a “radical,” as many others do, though I understand why the term “radical.” I consider hers an important voice, along with others, other alternative voices, in U.S. politics that should be engaged and listened to more often, given serious consideration by all sectors and varieties of U.S. inhabitants.

Sources

Wikipedia

Rose Clemente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Clemente

Letters and Politics January 24, 2019 edition “Radical Politics in the Age of Donald Trump” a conversation with “one of the most radical activist and voices in the country” Mitch Jeserich interview with Rosa Clemente: community organizer, independent journalist, and hip-hop activist; former (2008) U.S. vice presidential running mate of Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney  KPFA, https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-january-24-2019/

“Letters & Politics,” according to its website “seeks to explore the history behind today’s major global and national news stories.” It is hosted by Mitch Jeserich. https://kpfa.org/program/letters-and-politics/

PBS Column: “The Democratic Party is Not What It Seems” – Rosa Clemente, August 17, 2016

First published by PBS NewsHour, http://rosaclemente.net/pbs-column-democratic-party-not-seems/

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