Yesterday, on the steps of 1278 Sledge, we had an old-fashioned political rally from the front porch of Steve Haley's house. Steve, as you know, is the Cracker endorsee for the Democratic nomination for Senate 29 and is running opposite Ophelia Ford.
I sent out Rick's terrific post at the Freedonian to my list earlier, and some issue was taken over it. Yesterday was not at all about Ophelia, it's about changing the way we do politics in Memphis, Shelby County, the state of Tennessee, and hopefully all over the country. It's why I support Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman, and why I support Steve Haley. Ophelia Ford, as I said earlier, is a nice person who works hard, and that's great.
This is about clean money and clean elections, period.
We were fortunate to have, in addition to the candidate, Brad Watkins of Democracy for Memphis, and State Representative John Deberry (D-90) speak to us about clean money and not-so-clean money and its effects on politics, especially here.
Even more fortunately, if you weren't able to be there, Autoegocrat recorded and transcribed the speeches, and posted them at the Pesky Fly. I really want you to take time to read them, and download them for listening. John Deberry was particularly powerful, and after having heard him, made me proud that he represents us in the General Assembly.
One of the comments I received indicated that, after the ethics bill passed the GA last year, that campaign reform is dead for a long time. Well, only if we fail to DEMAND that things change.
Realize that we have a crappy, self-serving media here (the FLYER excepted, of course) and realize that the lobbyists and corporate-owned media don't want people to realize that they are not alone in demanding change. It will not easy; in fact it will be a long struggle to right this ship.
However, if we fail to act, we have no one to blame but ourselves. As Brad Watkins says, DEMAND CHANGE, to which I would add, then BE THAT CHANGE.
3 comments:
Please apologize to your list on my behalf. I didn't intend for that to come off like it was about Ophelia. I think she's a symptom of some of the problems that were discussed yesterday, and that's probably why she was on my mind, but it's definitely not about her.
It really was an extraordinary event, wasn't it friend?
Like I said, it's what this is SUPPOSED to be about...
Post a Comment