South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said Tuesday that it will be "difficult" for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, to defend himself against an allegation of sexual assault.
Graham called the allegation "disturbing," telling CBS News,
"I think some of these articles are very disturbing. He obviously has a
chance to defend himself here, but some of this stuff is it's going to
be difficult..."
Hegseth was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017. He has not been charged over the matter.
If
it's enough to make Trump loyalist Lindsey balk, it's must be even
worse than what we know. Or maybe Lindsey's just upset that Satan
spends all his time with Elon Musk these days.
If you have not already, please stream the video below.
It's the discussion that should have took place during the election. If you read C.I.'s stuff in October and last month, you are familiar with a lot of the important issues being discussed. Grasp that Black women can and have been discussing this but our media has not -- especially our beggar media that constantly asks for donations -- DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, etc.
Tuesday, December 3, 2024. The sad and pathetic go after Joe Biden,
Jill Stein declared victory prematurely on election night, THE ATLANTIC
pretends to explore Kamala's campaign, a ZOOM tonight will actually
explore the race, Trump's already declaring war on Palestinians in Gaza,
and much more.
Have the cucks and capons exhausted
themselves humping their inflatable mattresses while muttering "Hunter
Biden! Hunter Biden!" yet?
Oh, that wasn't an insult
to MAGA. We may get to those idiots this snapshot, we may not. I'm
referring to Jon Stewart, Jared Polis and all the other nutless men of
the left slamming Joe Biden for pardoning Hunter.
Don't you love the nutless boys, we haven't really seen them -- at least not embarrassing themselves so much -- since 1988.
Oh, look, it's the cuck and capon all in one with Michael Dukakis.
That's
what they want from Joe. And that's why they're the joke right now.
I'm not laughing with you, Jon, I'm laughing at you and your ridiculous
DAILY SHOW moment that tried to both-sides it -- and failed.
Joe
Biden protected his son from Donald Trump's vengeance. Most people can
grasp that and most people would have done the same. Jon, Jared,
Michael and the rest of you? You don't look smart, you don't come off
funny, you look like detached idiots without any emotions or human
connections -- in other words, you look like Michael Dukakis discussing
his own wife's what-if rape and murder with icy detachment.
While
they're striking poses and going for chuckles, the rest of us are stuck
in the real world. And noting how few others are here with us.
THE ATLANTIC's Ronald Brownstein files a 6223
word article about Kamala Harris' three month campaign for the
presidency of the United States. He spoke with David Plouffe (senior
adviser on the campaign), Jennifer O'Malley Dillon (campaign chair),
Quentin Fulks (deputy campaign manager) and Rob Flaherty (deputy
campaign manager). It's a very frustrating article for a number of
reasons.
In terms of Ronald Brownstein, this exchange is outrageous:
How much did Harris’s race or gender affect the outcome? Can a woman win the presidency in today’s America?
Plouffe: I’m
really eager for political scientists and researchers to try to get an
answer to this, because we certainly picked up some headwinds. Maybe
statistically this will be disproven, but I think, given the ’16
experience and this experience, it’s probably a bigger burden to be
elected president running as a woman than as a person of color.
I
think America is ready to elect a woman president. Running for
president and winning is an indescribably hard obstacle course. This
throws another obstacle into the field. And that makes me incredibly sad
to say that.
Kamala Harris is a Black woman. She is the first Black woman to run for president of a major party.
That single question and response is woefully inadequate.
Tonight, there's a ZOOM
-- registration may have closed -- The African American Policy Forum is
sponsoring it, Views from the 92%: Black Women Reflect on 2024 Election
and Road Ahead. It will be on The African American Policy Forum's YOUTUBE channel and
participants will include law professor Kimberle Crenshaw, THE
WASHINGTON POST's Karen Attiah, iONE DIGITAL's Kirsten West Savali,
Black Voters Matter Fund's LaTosha Brown, the National Coalition on
Black Civic Participation and Convener of Black Women's Roundtable's
Melanie Campbell, the National Council of Negro Women's Shavon
Arline-Bradley, the Transformative Justice Coalition, Atlanta Alumnae
Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta's Fran Phillips-Calhoun and Higher Heights'
Glynda Carr.
That's a lot of
informative speakers. Hopefully, they can address the reality of the
2024 election with regards to race and gender. In fact, they will.
Kimberle Crenshaw has made the interaction of race and gender her life's
work and every woman listed knows what actually went down even if a
number of White people want to pretend otherwise -- often so they can
ignore their own sexism and racism.
But
for now, just grasp that a 6223 word article about the run of the first
Black woman to be the presidential candidate on the ticket of a real
national party felt 115 words -- out of 6223 -- covered the two issues
and the intersection between the two. Grasp that and grasp what that
tells you about both the author and the respondent -- both White men.
The author, of course, was born in 1958 -- as the Stones said back in
the sixties, "Sing the song now."
The second part from the article that we'll note:
This
year marked a clear turning point as both campaigns shifted their
attention from mainstream outlets to niche media sources aimed at more
narrow segments of the electorate. How did these new dynamics shape the
campaign, and what do they mean for elections going forward?
Fulks: Republicans
have a very good echo chamber regarding how they get their information
out. Democrats will need to loosen up and take advantage of a changing
media environment.
Flaherty: Trump
did 30 podcasts to one audience. We did podcasts to a bunch of
different audiences, which meant we never really got that frequency. The
other lesson is that the nature of attention is fleeting, particularly
in this media ecosystem. That is one of the things we struggled with. We
were an attention machine for the first four weeks, then it was an open
[competition] for attention—and that’s a cage fight with a guy whose
entire life has been about getting attention for himself.
We
clean up with the most politically engaged people. For folks who don’t
have time to engage in politics, or folks who are just receiving a
little bit of information here and there, usually from friends and
family, the information environment is much more difficult, much more
competitive, and much more tied to culture. If we Democrats want to win,
particularly nationally, that’s the space that we’ve got to figure out,
and quick.
Plouffe: If
you had said two years ago Harris will be the nominee and she’ll do as
well with seniors as she did, you might have said no. The reason is
[that] those tend to be larger consumers of information. They also
tended to be the voters who understood the stakes of the second Trump
term more. The threat, whether it was abortion or democracy or rule of
law, mattered more to them than younger parts of the electorate.
Let's
stop there. We'll come back. But as someone who frequently felt like
very few gave a damn about seniors in this election, I
do have a few things to say. When Kamala was becoming the nominee, I
noted that she had to win seniors. Democrats don't. When I raised to
Kamala's campaign the senior issue, I was told they weren't important. I
was told they'd gone to Donald Trump in 2020 by such a huge margin,
they weren't a focus.
Well,
I didn't do any work on the 2020 campaign. I hadn't done work on a
presidential campaign since 2004. It appears Trump maintained his 52%
of older voters -- he had the same number in 2020. But Kamala appears
to have gotten 47% which would mean she got 2% more than Joe did in
2020. Imagine if the campaign had prioritized seniors.
I
noted over and over that they didn't. I believe the last time I
complained about it here, I was noting how the website was not helpful to
seniors who were visiting the website. First off, we get that a
campaign needs money -- but does the campaign get that seniors are on a
fixed income? And they have additional issues so your big on the screen
-- large -- beg for money that isn't easy for seniors to figure out how
to close? Not helpful. And that discouraged them from visiting
again. But when they did visit, they were looking for policy papers,
for where the candidate stands on the issues.
As
I noted here, Ava and I made up issue papers. We based it on facts.
We pulled things from speeches and interviews. Because there was no way
we
could speak to seniors without position papers. They grew up with
those, they want something they can review. I don't have friends in
Alaska from any campaign or anti-war work. But the other 49 states, Ava
and I activated chapters. That's what Ava and I worked on and we
weren't alone. Joining us and doing the same outreach was a friend with
John Kerry's presidential campaign, a friend
since Rev Jesse Jackson's first presidential campaign and a friend who
donates and grassroots worked on getting out the senior vote. Ava and I
and those three ran four national programs to get out the vote and we
did this
on our own, we strategized and we planned and we had no help from
Kamala's campaign staff because the staff wrote off seniors. Marcia
was brand new to this and she did an outstanding job in her city and in
cities around her -- Marcia and her wife did a great job. And it did
make a difference. That's because that's where I started as a high
schooler, too young to vote in an election, I'd be old enough the next
year. So to do my part, I phone banked and did everything after
school. And I got asked to debate a seniors' home. I did. Didn't
think I did well at all -- it had rained, I was soaked, my hair was
soaking wet and I was shivering. But the word back to our Dem Party
headquarter was that the seniors loved me. So I was then dispatched to
every retirement home in our area. And watching how others interacted
with seniors (GOPers, for example), I got why I was popular -- it's
called kindness. And that segment became my designated group for years
and years and years. Marcia is a natural at it the same way I was.
And, again, in 49 states, we worked over and over with no help from the
DNC -- no money, no position papers, nothing. Because the DNC wrote
this voting group off. This was one of the few groups where Kamala got a
larger percentage of voters than Joe had in 2020.
So
F**K you, DNC, and F**K you experts from the campaign who knew
everything and didn't need to focus on seniors. If you had focused, imagine her
getting even one more percent of the votes. You didn't just let her
down, you let seniors down. And that's called reality -- unlike the
crap you get on YOUTUBE. Quoting from Ava and my "Media: Journalistic Malpractice:"
Sam Seder is a comic. Not a particularly funny one. He's never had a
stand-up career that really paid off. The DSA is the Democratic
Socialists of America. They aren't Democrats. They're from a fringe
group that, if you go back far enough, were spending the early seventies
defending the US war on Vietnam. DSA comes from that rancid ground.
Today,
JACOBIN is the bible of the DSA. That would be the same JACOBIN that
allowed a podcaster doing a podcast for them to attack Katie Halper.
Katie's got 101 problems and we won't pretend she doesn't. However,
there was no reason for her to be attacked in that segment. And
rational people grasped that. JACOBIN did not. They went with the host
attacking Katie. A host who is no longer with JACOBIN and is now known
as the grifter she actually always was. Anahit Misak
Kasparian is this century's Jeane Kirkpatrick -- the woman raised
Socialist who turned on the Democratic Party to become a neocon and
advise Ronald Reagan. Ana Kasparian's right-wing grift was evident long
before she began attacking transgender people, trafficking in racism
and become a defender (and member) of MAGA.
Last
week, idiot met idiot on THE MAJORITY REPORT's segment "Harris Campaign
Had Volunteers 'Knocking On Republican Doors' During Wisconsin
Campaign." What happens when a self-identified DSA idiot calls in?
Journalistic malpractice.
Sam
-- and Emma -- let the idiot spout his crazy. He had been block
walking -- he didn't use the term and we're pretty sure he's never heard
of it -- in Wisconsin ahead of the election. Kamala Harris' campaign,
he whined, sent him to Republican areas!!!!
Emma and Sam tried to console him.
With
no adults in the room, the viewers were left with the impression
something awful had happened -- that this was proof of bad campaign
tactics on the part of Kamala's campaign.
No.
You're a stupid idiot if you bought that crap.
Block
walking. A campaign and/or political party depends upon volunteers to
block walk. We have both done that many times over the years. Has
Sam? Emma?
Sometimes,
unions will transport people to block walk and actually pay them for
it. (We have never been paid for block walking and one of us, C.I.,
back in college refused the payment the union was attempting to offer at
the end of the day.)
With
block walking, you're going through a neighborhood. It takes several
hours. You go door to door, you explain you're canvasing for whatever
candidate or candidates or party. You ask if the person has a few
minutes to talk? Some people will say no. Some people will slam their
doors in your face. Some will want to talk. Some who do support your
candidate, some who do are not supporters of your candidate but are
interested in politics and want to have an exchange.
That's block walking.
DSA moron couldn't believe that Kamala's team 'wasted' time and money on this effort.
It's
one of the more effective tools, first off. Second, it was a general
election. Not every Democrat is going to vote for the Democrat in the
race (Jeane Kirkpatrick never voted for a Democrat again after Jimmy
Carter beat Scoop Jackson in the 1976 Democratic Party primary) not
every Republican is going to vote for a Republican candidate and a lot
of people are undecided ahead of an election.
Block walking is a means to try to connect with voters face to face, one-on-one.
You need to down every street in every state.
But even more to the point, Wisconsin? It's an open primary state.
We
doubt the DSA idiot or Sam or Emma grasps what that means since they
all refused to mention -- let alone address -- that reality.
An
open primary state? Anyone can vote in the Democratic Party primary or
the Republican Party primary. States with closed primaries? You have
to be a registered Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. you have
to be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary.
Meaning? Ohio political parties have no concrete information on who is what.
There's no "We have 98% registered Republicans in this neighborhood."
You
could try extrapolating from who they voted into office in a district.
But that would be a lot of guess work. And many, many streets make up a
district.
The DSA idiot is a moron whining about a problem that he basically invented. Learn politics, you damn fool.
And that goes double for Emma and Sam.
They presented misinformation and signed off on it. Because they're idiots.
Stop talking and/or writing about things you are ignorant of.
Your bad media is not helping the left. You advancing lies are actually harming us all.
Back to the main topic of THE ATLANTIC excerpt, let's finish it out:
Do Republicans have a systematic advantage in reaching lower-propensity voters?
Flaherty: There’s
the conservative ecosystem, which is Fox, Ben Shapiro, [Sean] Hannity,
Newsmax—all these folks that are politically and ideologically aligned
with Donald Trump and the work of electing conservatives. They built and
cultivated that ecosystem. They also built and cultivated an ecosystem
that was less political but more cultural. You can call it the
“manosphere,” but I don’t think the manosphere is inherently partisan.
Joe Rogan talked about politics, but that’s not his whole thing. That
was an audience that [Republicans] viewed as key to mobilizing, and so
they did a lot of work to migrate information, values, and Trump himself
between the conservative ecosystem and this culturally aligned
ecosystem.
There’s
just not an analogous system on the left. It doesn’t exist because our
voters don’t have the same demand signal for alternative media to the
mainstream press. There just isn’t the same kind of profit incentive for
alternative media.
That
nonsense goes right along with what the self-proclaimed
expert on what it is to be Black has been saying -- yes, I'm referring
to White man Tim Wise -- self-proclaimed Black expert -- who's been
saying that if
Kamala avoided Joe Rogan, that was wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
In his mind, maybe. Doesn't make it right.
I
consider Jane Fonda a friend of many years. Doesn't mean I don't call
her out when needed. Jane just went on Bill Maher's hideous YOUTUBE
program. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. He's a
transphobe, he's a sexist pig, he's anti-Arab, go down the list. I have
no idea what stupidity was suffocating Jane's brain when she made the
decision to do that nonsense interview. I consider it a horrible,
horrible thing to do. And there are many who would feel the same about
Joe Rogan (who used to be so interesting and I bet I'm not the only one
getting tired biting my tongue over the reality of Joe -- a reality that
would decimate his MAGA audience numbers). I'm sick of this nonsense.
Howard Stern was going to save us, Keith Olbermann was going to save
us, there's always some man who is going to save us and then doesn't. I
can remember when people wrongly thought Phil Donahue was going to save
the Democrats -- by supporting Ralph Nader's 2000 run?
I'm tired of the garbage and the liars.
I'm
tired of THE ATLANTIC and everyone else. We don't need a Joe Rogan.
We do need an effective media system. I'm not talking corporate media,
I'm talking independent media. If Democrats try to take over PACIFICA
RADIO -- as they've been accused of doing in the past -- I'm honestly
all for it. I'm tired of the ones who take our money -- our big money
that can go elsewhere and really help people -- who turn around and stab
us in the back. And they did this go round. Kamala wasn't pure enough
for them. She didn't agree with them on this or that issue.
You
know John Kerry was 'for the Iraq War before I was against it' and ran
with no real plan on Iraq but they supported him. They didn't work day
after day trying to destroy him. Iraqis and Americans (and a lot of
other people) were dying in Iraq.
Barack
Obama they lied for because his Iraq War plan wasn't what people
thought it was -- and Samantha Power told the BBC that 'whatever
promise' he might make on the campaign trail didn't matter because you
had to figure stuff like that out after you got into the White House.
They buried that information. Tom Hayden was among those burying it and
then wanted my help when Barack was further backtracking on Iraq to the
point that Tom was finally acknowledging the remarks from March 2008 on
the . . . July 4th weekend. And I was supposed to give him credit for
that and support him -- he told me over the phone.
Really?
He knew about it back in March -- because we spoke of it and I told him
he was both a whore and a coward because he'd decided not to say a word
about it.
But then, months
later (and after the Democratic Party primary was over), he wants to
note it and, on top of that, to lie. He blamed it on Hillary Clinton's
campaign. He blamed his silence on Hillary. If her campaign had raised
the issue back in March? He would have known it! Liar on two counts.
First, he did know about it in March -- and I believe this was where he
went off on Wally because Wally noted the phone call Tom and I had over
this issue in March -- and, second, Hillary's campaign did raise the
issue. They did a press release, they brought it up in press conference
with reporters (David Corn dismissed the story in the press conference
and actually attacked the campaign for bringing it up).
But
suddenly Gaza became the issue. And let's all ignore that Michael
Flynn visited the Gaza Freaks in Michigan. In fact, Flynn began reaching
out on Trump's behalf ahead of the October 6, 2023 incident. He was
there the month before and, among others, met with "Democratic" Mayor Amer
Ghalib -- a detail that Beggar Media concealed -- along with subsequent
visits. Money exchanged hands, promises were made and Muslim
leadership in Dearborn and Hamtramck got in bed with Donald Trump.
And then, just by chance, you understand, the trashing on Kamala began.
She was for genocide! She didn't care about the Palestinians!
That's
what they said. On our 'independent' media. The money had already
bought their attacks on President Joe Biden. Then he dropped out and
they moved the attack over to Kamala.
This
depressed and suppressed turnout. And that didn't bother Amy Goodman
of DEMOCRACY NOW!, or THE NATION or THE PROGESSIVE or IN THESE TIMES or .
. .
Medhi
Hassan confronted Jill Stein -- who received pro bono support -- an
in-kind donation -- on the fact that all she did was attack Kamala
Harris, not Donald Trump. But we weren't supposed to notice that these
holy truth tellers from Michigan were not in fact pure or particularly
honest. Kamala wasn't president but we were going to hold her
accountable for Joe's actions.
And we were going to refute and attack everything she said.
Independent media amplified those attacks.
No
one -- MOTHER JONES, this includes you -- wanted to deal with reality
so they didn't tell you about the vast homophobia in Dearborn and
Hamtramck that emerges only after the Gaza Freaks take control of the
cities. Flynn reached an agreement with Amer Ghalib in September of
2023. And even when Amer endorsed Donald Trump for president, DEMOCRACY
NOW! and all the other fake asses wouldn't tell you reality.
The
beggar media had never -- not even in 2000 -- attacked the Democratic
Party's presidential nominee so repeatedly over and over on a daily
basis.
No. I don't think
the answer is to flood these beggars with more money. I think the only
real answer is to cut them off. To send a message that we're not going
to ever again accept this. You beg us for money, we give it to you and
then you try to destroy the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. If
they'd just treated her fairly, I don't think we would have such a
problem. But there is a problem now. And why did this happen? Why
did, for example, Amy Goodman decide, in 2024, that she would spend
every broadcast attacking Kamala Harris day after day, week after
week?
Racism and sexism.
Kamala was the first Black woman. And they were going to attack her
daily. COMMON DREAMS sometimes had four columns on their main page
attacking Kamala and insisting what she needed to do instead. Read
those columns and grasp that they never did this to a male Democratic
Party presidential candidate. And they did something similar during the
Democratic Party primary to Hillary Clinton in 2007 and 2008 led by the
elderly gals of CODE PINK. But not even in 2016 did they do this to
Hillary.
No, this was very
different as White people and people of color made clear that they
weren't going to take anything from a Black woman.
They didn't want a Black woman to be in charge of the country.
They made that clear just as they made their racism and sexism clear.
Some
people are whining and insisting that Arabs are being scapegoated. No,
they aren't. Not every Arab American attacked Kamala, many voted for
her. But in Michigan, racists Arabs and Muslims worked to defeat Kamala
because they're racists. The homophobia's easy to track in both
cities. And it's reported on by the corporate media. But no one wanted
to touch the war on Black history led by Amer Ghalib and others.
Yeah,
you liars in Beggar Media missed that story. Didn't report on it
once. Amer even has a video online -- or did -- where he and Flynn
speak and they're both attacking Black history.
When
Governor Ron DeFailure does that, we rightly call it racism but, for
some reason, when Arabs do it we don't. As one of the few sites in the
US to actually cover the treatment of Black Iraqis in Iraq, I'm not
surprised that an often oppressed people could also be racist towards
others. Basra was an important port in the slave trade, for example.
Yet Blacks in Iraq continue to be targeted with racism to this day.
Dearborn
and Hamtramck went for Trump and Stein. They're very proud of it --
we've gotten three press releases on it so far at the public account and
how they celebrated election night with grifter Jill Stein who was in
Dearborn for that celebration.
They really showed Kamala, right?
No,
they showed and sported their stupidity. As Betty notes, Satan Trump
has announced that the Israeli hostages better be released immediately
or there will be "hell to pay." For Satan, it's all Hamas in Gaza. He
doesn't distinguish. At THE INTELLIGENCER, Ed Kilgore worries how far Satan's prepared to go.
It's
what the Gaza Freaks should have been worried about. But they didn't
truly care about the people of Palestine -- even while insisting it was
their relatives!!!!!!
Well if the Palestinians mattered to you, then you vote for who's going to help, not for who's going to destroy.
Clyde
Shabazz and Jill Stein did an online segment "Kamala Harris Is Killing
Palestinian Children." Facts be damned, right? Well the two losers
were celebrating their 'victory.' Clyde tried to get into the US
Congress. And he's proud that he almost got 8,000 votes in that
election. That's 1.8% of the vote in that election. He lost and he
lost big time.
Do you know
what grifter Jill Stein said on election night in Dearborn? I do
because, again, they keep sending their press releases to the public
account.
Jill declared, "We live to fight another day and we come out stronger than ever."
Really, Jill?
Who's we?
Are
the Palestinians in Gaza that we all suspect Trump's going to start
bombing his first day back in the White House if the Israeli hostages
aren't release -- are they going to live to fight another day?
I
don't have time for these crazies. Jill's a grifter and so are the
people who promoted her and encouraged her. You all have blood on your
hands.
I mentioned the treatment of Blacks in Iraq so let's note two things on that before we wind down.
Black
Iraqis are the descendants of immigrants and enslaved people from
Sub-Saharan and East Africa. Their presence in Iraq dates back to
the Abbasid empire, starting from the ninth century when some newcomers
came to the region as sailors, workers, captured slaves, or enslaved
soldiers. They largely originated from the coast of modern-day Kenya,
Tanzania, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, and other African countries. In the absence of formal statistics, their community leaders estimate their numbers today to be as high as
1.5 to 2 million inhabitants. Black Iraqis are scattered across diverse
regions of the country, concentrating in the governorates of Basra,
Maysan, and Dhi Qar. There are also a few families in Baghdad, Wassit,
and other cities. However, the largest community resides on the
outskirts of the cities of Basra and Zubair.
Despite slavery being officially abolished in the nineteenth century and
supported by Article 14 of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution, which
stipulates “equality without racial-based discrimination,” Black Iraqis
still endure systematic discrimination, marginalization, and structural
racism embedded in historical stigmas and xenophobia against black
people in the Arab world,
according to activists I spoke to. Iraq is a melting pot of other
ethnic, religious, and cultural communities. Yet, many of these groups
are “invisible” and can easily fade in the crowd due to similar physical
features. In contrast, Black Iraqis are the “visible others” who
cannot be unseen or concealed. Hundreds of invisible cultural and
social lines segregate the two communities, ostracize Black Iraqis, and
reaffirm their otherness in urban design, tribal allegiances, and
marriage arrangements.
One
intriguing conversation I had with a group of non-black Iraqi
academics, opened my eyes to the extent of denial most people feel about
the subject. I was told repetitively, “We don’t have black and white in
Iraq. We are all equal,” and was asked to drop the appellation black
Iraqis or Afro-Iraqis and replace it with asmar or abu samra,
which means tanned or brown in Arabic. Little did they know how
offensive it is to deny the community its blackness and attempt to
dilute it with a drop of whiteness. In contrast, the Black Iraqis I have
been working with, including Dr. Thawra Yousif, Dr. Abdulkareem Aboud,
and Dr. Abdel-Zahra Sami Farag, all influential figures in their
community, proudly claim their blackness and celebrate it.
Structural
racism and the absence of a tribal umbrella have relegated most black
Iraqis to the margins of the economy and locked them into a number of
small manual jobs as domestic help or performers. According to their
representatives, the population also suffers from low educational
attainment rates, unemployment, and poverty. Additionally, there is not a
single Black Iraqi holding a high-ranking position in
the government, nor do they have any political representation.
Recently, human rights activists from the community have suffered assassination attempts and violence to oppress their demands, according to international reports.
With
the ensuing development of an Iraqi civil society after 2003, Jalal
Diab Thijeel, an Iraqi-Africans, founded the Free Iraqi Movement in 2007
to represent his community of approximately two million, primarily located in Basra province.
The
movement seeks to overcome their marginalisation, advocating civil
rights, government recognition of the community, and anti-discrimination
laws to address the racism they endure.
When
it was founded, no one from their community served as a cabinet level
minister, MP in parliament, or even in a municipal council. The state’s
recognition as a minority would entitle them to government-mandated
quotas for elected positions.
The
2008 election of Barack Obama served as an inspiration for their
community, and Thijeel hung a photo of the president in his classroom,
where he taught courses on black Iraqi history, and fostered an Iraqi
hip-hop scene to protest endemic discrimination.
On April 26, 2013, Thijeel was assassinated,
most likely by political factions opposed to his attempt to run for
office. Nonetheless, the Movement survived the death of its founder, and
found a renewed rallying point again stemming from the US. While the
election of Obama to America’s highest executive post in 2008 served as
an inspiration for Iraqi-Africans, so did the grassroots initiatives of
the Black Lives Matter movement.
