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Primary Choices

So the day every political junkie has been waiting for is just around the corner—Super Tuesday is this coming Tuesday, February 5th.

For those of us who have doggedly tracked this protracted presidential race, Super Tuesday is the mother lode of primaries. Democrats in 22 states and Republicans in 21 will choose their candidates.

This year-long roller coaster ride of democracy has treated us to a panoply of candidates that span the political spectrum. But as Super Tuesday approaches our choices have been slashed and for some hopes dashed.

New York’s Republicans are denied their favorite son because Rudy Guiliani denied good political advice. His Florida-only strategy backfired. Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee may or may not stick around after Tuesday but for all intents and purposes the Republican race is now between John McCain and Mitt Romney.

When the race started, my favorite Dem was John Edwards—I really don’t care how much he spends on a haircut. I liked what he had to say. I liked his dedication to his wife and family. I liked that as a southern Democrat he gave the Republicans agita. But as the race heated up, his candidacy didn’t.

So the burning question now is who am I going to vote for on Tuesday?

Well, I have never been more conflicted in my life. My internal flip flopping between Clinton and Obama makes Mitt Romney look like steady Eddie.

As far as lesbian and gay issues are concerned, I know we can count on either Clinton or Obama to do the right thing. With either of them in the White House, the eight years of homophobia that has become a trademark of the Bush presidency will end. Assuming that the Democrats maintain and expand their majorities in both the House and Senate, we’ll see either President Clinton or President Obama signing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Matthew Shepard Act and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Those events will be the beginning of what could be a golden age for LGBT issues in America.

But, what about Super Tuesday?

I like Hillary Clinton. She’s done a good job as one of our U.S. Senators. She’s intelligent, understands the intricacies of U.S. policy both abroad and at home and has a personal fortitude that has withstood political and personal firestorm after firestorm. She welcomes challenges. She’s not afraid of anything.

Letting down her guard just a bit in New Hampshire showed the country that there’s an emotional core to this woman. Opening up that window let us all know that she’s just like the rest of us—human.

It may surprise some of you that behind this hard, political exterior of mine there’s a political idealist defining my views.

After eight years of cynicism and lies, I really want to believe in our country again. You have no idea how deep this desire is. I’m one of those kids Caroline Kennedy spoke about in her recent op-ed in the New York Times. I really never knew her dad. My first real memory of the Kennedy presidency is the grainy black and white image on our family TV of the plane in Dallas that flew his body back to DC. I was five. My mother stood at the ironing board crying.

But it is the hope he instilled in my parents who handed it down to me that has informed my politics and my activism. JFK embodied an America of promise. He reached out his hand to us so that we could take the hands of others and make our nation a better place to live.

I want that back. I want to believe in America again.

The only candidate that has spoken to the idealist in me is Barack Obama.

His belief in change, his ability to bring people into the presidential process who usually stay home, his understanding of the real challenges that face our country inspires. But the pragmatic part of me is concerned about his experience factor. Are his years as an Illinois State Senator and a U.S. Senator enough?

Well let’s not forget that political office was W’s fall back position because he couldn’t make it in business. Obama on the other hand has spent his entire career organizing people for political change. Perhaps the experience issue is just a political ruse.

In just a few days I’ll have to make a decision. But, it won’t happen until the voting booth’s curtain is closed and I’m ready to pull the lever.

Standing Up

My family’s dinner was disrupted this past Friday night, January 18th by sirens and flashing lights.

There in the midst of our bucolic neighborhood, on a private road to what was once an estate in Menands, was a number of Troy police officers, with a number of Troy police cars—marked and unmarked--to match. The five of us sitting at the table—Alex, my son, Dale, his father, Gerri, his step-mom, Courtney, his girlfriend and I—went out the front door to see what was up.

We stopped dead in our tracks about 25 to 30 feet away from the action. It was from there that we witnessed a police brutality reality show.

The cops had chased two guys in a car through the streets of Troy, across the Hudson River, and into our road. By the time I was out there, the two suspects—Marquese Hill and Jamel DeWitt—were face down on the ground and were individually being beaten by two officers.

It was very film noir. It was dark and the scene was lit from behind by the lights from all the cars. The silhouette of one of the officers standing over one of the suspects repeatedly raising his baton high over his head and then crashing it down on the suspect’s body will stay with me for quite some time. So will the sound the baton made every time it hit the face-down body. It happened over and over again lasting for about 25-30 seconds.

We all started screaming for the cops to stop. When they finally did, two of the cops came running over to us and told us to “Shut Up,” “Get in the house,” “They had a gun and could have come into your house,” and “This is none of your business.” It certainly was our business, We stood our ground. They walked away saying we were “probably on the jury that let that killer go free in Troy” referring to a jury verdict last week that found a member of the 69ers motorcycle club not guilty of stabbing another person to death outside a bar.

By now Hill and DeWitt were cuffed and being put into police cars. That’s when one of the officers at the scene told them loudly enough for us to hear, “They’ll probably invite you over for Sunday brunch.”

I dug into my pocket, got out my cell phone and immediately called Rex Smith, the editor of the Times-Union at home. Needless to say, what followed next was a hailstorm of media coverage with my face plastered all over the TV, my voice on local radio and my name in our local papers.

What we witnessed was an injustice that is much graver than Hill’s parole violation or the police wanting to question DeWitt regarding a shooting.

The Troy police and the city’s mayor are calling the actions by the two officers a reasonable use of force. I call it a travesty. Once the two suspects were face down on the ground all the officers needed to do was put their knees in their backs and cuff them. Instead, the adrenaline rush of a chase in hot pursuit lead to excessive use of force.

There will be an internal affairs investigation but how effectively can the police police themselves?

This isn’t about me being soft on crime. This is about our police acting professionally and responsibly. If Hill and DeWitt committed crimes they should go through the legal process and do their time, if that’s what needs to happen. They don’t, however, deserve to be beaten.

Do the police who patrol the tri-cities’ inner-city neighborhoods have a challenge on their hands? Absolutely. But using violence to combat violence only works on the battlefield—and as we see in Iraq, that approach doesn’t work too well either.

Instead of approaching their jobs with suspicion and violence, why can’t the police take the opportunity to make real change in those neighborhoods by setting a positive example—acting professionally and responsibly would be a good first step. There’s a reason why folks in the inner city don’t trust the police—Friday night was just the tip of the iceberg of distrust.

I’m not saying the police shouldn’t do their job in tracking down criminals but not everyone who lives in inner-city neighborhoods commit crimes. All this incident has done is heightened the tension between Troy’s police and those who they are sworn to serve and protect.

I’ve received a lot of support from folks I know and some I don’t. A few have even called my actions a public service. I call it being a responsible citizen and taxpayer.

Here are the articles that have appeared in the Times Union, including an editorial calling for an independent investigation.

Download tu_11908_troy_police_accused_of_attack.pdf

Download tu_12008_troy_police_defend_use_of_force.pdf

Download tu_12108_lawyer_seeks_outside_probe_of_troy_police.pdf

Download tu_12108_soares_examining_complaint_troy_cops_beat_suspects.pdf

Download tu_12408_editorialinvestigating_the_police.pdf

Democracy in Action

Next month I’ll be 50.

I started paying attention to politics in the latter half of my first decade. I actually did my first literature drop when I was eight for Eugene Nickerson, the only Democrat to ever elected county executive in Nassau County until the beginning of this century. For a little kid, it was pretty exciting.

Fast forward four decades or so and I’m feeling really excited again. Not because Obama won or Clinton won but because democracy is winning.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, as a country, we actually have a choice. We finally don’t have to just pick between two evils. Each side of the aisle has at least three viable candidates for president.

That means we can get involved, ask questions, deliberate and exercise our ability to make our nation a better place to live. We can work for change. We can get fired up and ready to go. We can find our own voice.

We can get actually get excited about presidential politics.

Since this campaign began a good year ago, I thought we’d all be brain dead by now—fatigued by the constant droning of candidates saying they’re the best choice. Well, happily, I was wrong.

Starting earlier—while making the campaigns more expensive—gave us more of an opportunity to engage. We could actually do our part of retail politics—pick over the candidates like we pick over all the clothes at Macy’s in the after Christmas sales. The earlier start gave us time to explore their platforms, talk about it with our friends and family, create a national dialogue about the future of our country.

With the first two events of the political season behind us, we’ve gotten just a glimpse of how dynamic this race will be.

Iowa gave us Obama and Huckabee as the victors. Going into New Hampshire, it was pretty clear that John McCain was the resurgent Republican. He’s the only one who spent any real time there.

Huckabee may win a few more primaries down south but watch out for Guiliani in Florida and New York on Super Tuesday, February 5th. Fred Thompson is sleep walking through his campaign hoping his good ol’ boy actor-persona will win him a few delegates.

It’s great to see the Republicans in such disarray. From where I sit, their divergent primary field speaks to the lack of leadership in the White House. In typical fashion, the party in control has not developed a road map to keep their grip on power. We saw it in New York after 12 years of Mario Cuomo as Governor. We’re seeing again after eight years of the worst president in American history.

Not that I’m complaining. This administration’s political arrogance and lack of foresight have given the Democrats an open door to the White House—but then again, the Dems have a knack for losing elections that were their’s to win.

It was great fun, however, to watch the pundits and pollsters squirm Tuesday night. After predictions of another Obama win, perhaps at double digits, Hillary Clinton’s show of humility and humanity turned the tide for a unexpected upset. Chris Matthews looked stunned on MSNBC—it was great.

But this whole thing is very far from over. Next week, the Nevada caucuses and the S. Carolina primary will add another chapter to this roller coaster ride of a campaign. Despite the drubbing they took this week, the pundits and pollsters promoted by the media will continue to predict who the winners will be.
What Iowa and New Hampshire showed us, however, is that all the predictions in the world won’t deter a independent minded voter, affiliated with a party or not, from voting the way she or he wants to.

New Hampshire women saw themselves in Hillary. How many of us have been vilified for being too strong and smart and then sneered at for showing a bit of emotion.

Independent and young voters saw themselves in Obama. His message of change, his ability to rise above the petty politics of campaigning, his way with words—Obama is speaking to voters who would usually stay home. He’s energizing a new base—a new generation of activists that just may write the next chapter in our presidential politics.

In the months ahead, we’ll all be on this roller coaster—some candidates will climb to the top and stay there and some will come crashing down with a speed that defies expectations.

After five decades of watching and working, it’s great to know that democracy can still be so exciting.

Libby Post is the founding chair of the Empire State Pride Agenda and a political commentator on public radio, on the Web, and in print media. She can be reached at libby@proudlyout.com.