There are so many ways I could hit this photograph with my final thoughts on this photograph. Yet, I keep coming back to two quotes that resonated with me during the whole Lunch with Clinton mess.

The first quote comes from FireDogLake's Hardin-Smith:

liberal bloggers were invited to meet with the former President of the United States to talk about policy initiatives and the Democratic party and politics going into the November elections.

These words resonated because it made no sense to me for any of the bloggers in that meeting to rationalize the omission of the top bloggers of color in the left; especially if these discussions were meant to hammer on what Democrats could do to win the midterms and, down the road, the presidency. Why would these bloggers be silent accomplices to this big tactical mistake? Why in the world would they want to keep the influencers of thousands of connectors within the colored grassroots?

Then I read this quote from Jeralynn Merrit: I enjoyed being with Liza one night in Amsterdam, but FDL is family.

I was so blown by how not just simple, but simplistic and pedestrian the explanation was. The photograh is about "family". Not just in the physical sense of the word, mind you.

Look again at the photograph?

Have you read at least 5 of these bloggers? Take any --MyDD, FireDogLake, DailyKos, Americablog, Mahablog, TalkLeft, Eschaton, The blogging of the President. Tell me, how really different are these bloggers' styles of writing, topics of discussion and brand of ranting?

Armstrong Williams (of all people!) wrote the following in an article called, Diversity, which is about the absence of people of color in the technology fields :

For example, when hiring, bosses may look for those personal traits they associate with their own success. Consequently, they may end up hiring people who look, think and act in a manner similar to themselves. If confronted with a minority applicant who looks, sounds or communicates differently, they may turn these differences into perceived soft skill deficits.

[...]

Unfortunately, this sort of latent discrimination is virtually impossible to prove. Partly because there exists a strong tendency among judges (and sometimes even juries) to favor an employer's interpretation of events. But more to the point, because people in management simply tend to mentor people who look and act and sound like their sons.

What that means is that young, white Americans have traditionally benefited from the availability of mentors to help hone their talents, while minorities, even to this day, suffer from a lack of mentors to identify with and learn from. There is a logical progression: a lack of mentors equals a lack of learning opportunities, equals a lack of advancement, and equals a lack of certain high level positions being filled by minorities. With time, this sort of arbitrary sorting of high and low level employees comes to be regarded by many as the natural way of things

Most of the people, and I would argue for the exception of Jessica Valenti, have had through the last 2 years what amounts to the kind of working relationships Armstrong describes in his essay. They refer to each other's work regularly, refer each other to grants, workshops, conferences and mainstream media opportunities. And they all as a block make decisions on which candidates they are going to be fundraising. As a block, they all work together as one seamless narrative called "the blogs".

That's the problem I see with that photograph.

We have here a picture of suppression. There are experiences taken out of the picture. There are political interpretations and strategizing taken out of the picture. There are whole swaths of voters and electoral percentage points taken out of the picture. There is a whole history and present of political activism within the Democratic Party that has been taken out of that picture.

It is not lost on me that the top black and latino bloggers of the "liberal blogosphere" are not too keen on Hillary Clinton running for president. It is not lost on me either that we describe ourselves as progressives and not as liberals. As you can see, not one of us is in that photo.

Which is why, when I asked the fateful 3 questions,

What does it mean though that there are 20 bloggers invited to this lunch and not one is black or latino? What does it mean for this group of bloggers to be patting themselves on the backs for being with Clinton when they are all in Harlem and not one of them is a person of color? What does it mean for these people to be there and have not one of them raise this issue in their blogs?

I was not just referring to race.

When I asked those questions I was thinking : Why is diversity such a dirty word when it should be considered an integral part of any political practice?

Because, seriously, who were Clinton's Alberto Gonzales or Condoleeza Rice? There is no way you could tell me or anybody with any sort of political memory that Clinton had an administration as diverse as both of the administrations of George W. Bush. There is no way in hell that any Democrat could comfortably defend that.

When I look at the Clinton bloggers photograph, I don't see a confederacy of racists. What I see is a group of people who have forgotten they are part of a larger narrative of activism in this country. What is worse, all I see is a group of people who don't have the political sophistication and even less the historical imagination to represent people like me.

What I see are people who have no understanding of the fact that they had the opportunity to sit at that table thanks to the blood, sweat and tears spilled by thousands of minority activists who fought for equal rights for all peoples not just their own little tribes.

My stepfather, Gilberto Gerena-Valentin was one of those activists.

A lifelong progressive, he along with Herman Badillo (first Puerto Rican elected to Congress) and Irma Vidal Santaella (the firs Puerto Rican woman to enter the NY State Bar) testified to Congress in favor of extending the provisions of the Voting Rights Act to cover issues of linguistic discrimination that, although covering Puerto Ricans in the amendment, it would actually affect millions of voters who fell into the category of linguistic minorities.

Italians, Greeks, Germans, Russians : There was a time that from a legal standpoint they were considered "linguistic minorities". It's one of the reasons the ethnic whites would change their names, the way they dressed, the patterns of their speech. They needed to in order to lessen the brunt of the discriminatory practices that kept millions of these new Americans away from the ballot boxes.

Ironically, many white Puerto Ricans were affected too --and without cause, given that Puerto Ricans have had citizenship since the 1900s. As long as they live in any state but for Washington D. C., our vote was supposed to count as equally as the vote of any John Smith.

This was the 1960s, right smack in the middle of the Civil Right movement. At the time, many of the European ethnic minority activists understood that in order for them to win equal access, they needed to create strong strategic allegiances with the networks of African American and Puerto Rican activists that were the dynamos of the Civil Rights movements.

At that time they were the immigrants. Immigration has always been a thorn in the side of US politics so confusing linguistic and ethnic discrimination with the right to vote was problematic. On the other hand, pushing for a law that would protect US citizens who were living under what amounted to linguisitic apartheid, made complete tactical sense. Hence the fight to get the "Puerto Rico amendment" passed in 1965.

This is what Juan Cartagena had to say about the amendment:

The truth is that the Voting Rights Act was initially and deservedly aimed at restoring the dignity of African-American voters, but it was never just Black and White. Even in 1965.

[...]

Section 4(e) – the “Puerto Rican Section” of the Act – was an amazing success. The
lawsuits brought by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund in New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Illinois and Connecticut were all victorious.

But the untold story of Section 4(e) is how it worked to help Latino and Black voters in New York City and Latino, Asian and Native American voters nationwide. Section 4(e) cases led to the recapture of three counties in New York City under Section 5 of the Act – forcing the City to prove that all future changes would not discriminate. Section 4(e) cases also allowed the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund to convince Congress in 1975 that English only election systems were just as exclusive as other tests for voting in the Deep South. And Section 4(e) cases showed the country that if bilingual elections could work for Boricuas in New York City – the biggest city in the U.S. – they could work anywhere. This led to the bilingual elections for all Latinos, and Asian Americans and Native Americans as well.

PDF File

And so Section 4e or the "Puerto Rican Amendment" of the VRA was introduced to the Senate by N.Y. Senators Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits and approved in 1965.

'Tis the nature of the US democratic beast. 'Tis why I have faith in the democratic process.

The Clinton bloggers photograph is a testament of the lack of understanding of the strategic importance of diversity in the left. Not for some ludicrous equal opportunity reasons but because by bringing to the table as many of the voting communities that support the Democratic party as posible, you are ensuring those networks remain strong and united in a common goal.

The unfortunate aspect of that photo is that, if their reason for identifying with other bloggers is also extended to political candidates, then what we have here is a portrait of the kind of people who are going to win the midterms elections. Which is why, if these are the people who are going to lead the way during the Presidential elections, you have been forwarned : Democrats will loose in 2008.

If the New America Media Summit on Immigration is any indication of the kind of political behind the scenes work that is happening right now, one of the most interesting political alliances we are going to see in 2008 is the coalitions of labor, immigration and civil rights groups that are being forged right now.

There are 26 million legal Americans and 13.9 million undocumented or "transnational" Americans. 55% of today's New Americans are Latin American, followed by 30% of Asians and just 15% of Africans and Europeans. Of the 25 million who can vote, 77% are registered to do so; whereas, of the 13.9 who can't, about 30% are living in mixed status families, most being parents to US born children.

Last spring's immigration rallies were just the beginning of a movement that is showing no sign of stopping. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented American activists are ready to stump for candidates and work on get out vote initiatives to help elect candidates that represent them. Undocumented Americans may well become the dark horse in the 2008 elections through their donations and their grassroots support.

Need an example? Take the political involvement of Dominicans in the New York City 2005 mayoral elections. In a blow to the city's Puerto Rican and African American party machines, Dominican political activists walked away from the Democratic ticket to throw their support behind Michael Bloomberg, the Republican incumbent. Thanks to thei involvement, Bloomberg won in 2005 with a sizeable percent of the minority vote.

If it happened in New York City, it can happen nationwide. Want a better hint?

The McCain-Kennedy proposal was favored by more than three-quarters of legal immigrants from Latin America, three-fifths of those from Africa and Europe and by a majority of those from Asia. President Bush’s immigration proposal was acceptable to a majority of legal immigrants but was chosen as “the best way to deal with illegal immigration” by only one-fifth of the respondents. The immigration bill approved by the House of Representatives was favored by less than 10 percent of legal immigrants. Legal immigrants from throughout the world strongly oppose “charging illegal immigrants with the felony of unlawful presence,” “arresting and deporting illegal immigrants” and “denying U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States.” Latin Americans have strong negative feelings about “building a wall along major sections of the border between the United States and Mexico.”

McCain may well end up winning in 2008 thanks to the name recognition take comes with the favorability of this bill. And if some of my Democrat-voting friends are any indication, there would be a sizeable chunk of "mainstream" (read, white) Democrats willing to vote for him.

This photograph spells not trouble but doom for Democrats.

This "family" of "the blogs" cannot articulate the colored and ethnically diverse vision of the country's political future because they seem incapable of understanding the social, economic, ethnical and racial dynamics that put them there in the first place. And they can't seem to understand that these dynamics are what are producing the fastest growing segment of the population who would most likely vote Democrat while looking more like J. Lo and Beyonce than Gloria Steinem or, unfortunately for Jessica Valenti, Monica Lewinski.

Read the excellent analysis and roundup of discussions put together by Sunrunner, if you want to catch up with the Monica Lewinski reference.

Jessica Valenti became the center of attacks by dubiously self-identified Republican feminist, Ann Althouse. This woman basically took some disparaging remarks left by her commenters and dared to compare Valenti to Lewinsky just because she was standing in front of Bill Clinton. That whole mudslinging started at about the same time I was being attacked for daring to call out the organizer(s) of this lunch.

I honestly do not believe it is a coincidence. Neither did Zuzu over at Feministe. The one distinction that I think was lost in the whole discussion of the attacks against me and Jessica is that I believe the attacks were appropriate for the kind of narrative of values that photograph represented.

In a recent article published by AlterNet, George Lakoff bemoans the lack of education in cognitive sciences among progressive political communicators. Called, 12 traps that keep Progressives from winning, the article is an introduction to his new book, Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision.

Jessica Valenti became the punching bag for republican bloggers because I believe that, unconsciously or otherwise, they understood the falseness of her being there. Feministing is not a blog about electoral tracking or pseudo-political punditry. The mission of Valenti's blogs is to articulate feminist values to a new generation of women. Her blog is a strong voice for evangelizing a vision of a political future founded on the practices of choice, inclusion and equality.

If this photograph was to be a visual aid of the voice of the left-wing netroots, right-wing bloggers caught on how Jessica was completely out of place ideologically and rhetorically. Her presence there causes a cognitive disonance of gigantic proportions.

The DailyKos crowd looks on feminists, gay and minority bloggers not as the values voters who articulate the vision of a progressive America. They look on us as useless "issues" voters who need to be stamped out of any political discourse. Unfortunately,they don't get how profoundly dangerous that tactic is. If you are hell bent on turning away from the people who are articulating your values and in destroying the very institutions (ie, GLAAD, NARAL, NAACP) who help promote those values, you are destroying the very foundation that made it possible for you to gain the political power you have today :

Politics is about values; it is about communication; it is about voters trusting a candidate to do what is right; it is about believing in, and identifying with, a candidate's worldview. And it is about symbolism. Issues are secondary -- not irrelevant or unimportant, but secondary. A position on issues should follow from one's values, and the choice of issues and policies should symbolize those values.

One misunderstanding, common among progressive circles, is that the Reagan and George W. Bush elections were about "personality" rather than anything substantive. Nothing is more substantive than a candidate's moral worldview -- and whether he or she authentically abides by it.

From 12 Traps That Keep Progressives From Winning

I am honestly emboldened by all what has happened since my criticisms of this lunch won me the contempt and banishment of most of the people involved. Je ne regret rien.

It's time someone rang the alarm on the framing of yet another Democratic party fiasco that may set back progressive politics another 20 years. It was time to ring the alarm on all the traps that keep progressive from winning. Time to ring the alarm on the misguided strategies of liberals and focus on the progressive values necessary for firing up the political fires of the real progressive movement : a movement that is about equality, inclusion and choice.

People have been listening and going in the right direction : The best example is how bloggers have been mindfully aware of the ways they could set back years of civil rights activism by the way they frame the Mark Foley scandal. Because the case is not just about gays in the closet being the foes of gay civil rights activists. This is a case of republican values undermining the progressive and democratic values that allow men and women to live in egalitarian society with no fear of discrimination, repudiation or banishment.

I am truly emboldened because I believe this controversy has created a shift in the way people are thinking beyond just the win and just the political "gotcha". It's making progressives talk about the political power in having clearly articulated values if they want a clearly defined vision of the future.

Yeah, it's lost me the favor of "family of the blogs". I believe what we have to gain a real network of not just one or two but many different blogospheres and progressive grassroots.

Honey, I can live with that.

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