Site icon journal-isms.com

Will We Get Back to Katrina?

richard

A Mayor-Elect Says Media Misread Election

Ronald V. Dellums wondered aloud why the news media did not relate the outcome of the midterm elections last week to the failed government response to Hurricane Katrina last year.

“People went to the polls to express themselves on Katrina. It’s not been talked about,” according to the California Democrat who served 28 years in Congress and is preparing to take office as mayor of Oakland.

“Because at a time when the country was saying that we’re in a foreign country for the purposes of security and safety, when it hit home, our response was inept, inadequate, insincere and lacking in compassion. Here’s the wealthiest nation in the world — gave a Third World response to a major catastrophe. In my opinion, Katrina was a metaphor for everything wrong in urban America. What Katrina did was expose the stark reality of the vulnerability of urban life.

“Every city in America is a potential Katrina,” he continued, “Every city in America has the same problems,” health care, education, poverty, affordable housing. “To push it to the background means we place the problems of urban America to the background.”

The charismatic Dellums, an icon of the left who turns 71 on Nov. 21, was drafted by citizen petitions to run for the mayor’s seat being vacated by Jerry Brown. But he said he told voters there was no Superman “S” on his chest; that residents must see themselves not just as residents, but as citizens, with the responsibility that implies. Citizen task forces are working on recommendations to deal with the myriad city problems.

Dellums was speaking Sunday night at the opening session of a three-day meeting of the Trotter Group of African American columnists, hosted by the John S. Knight fellowship program at Stanford University.

A post-election Newsweek poll released this week did not list Katrina as one of respondents’ reasons for reducing President Bush to a historic low 31 percent approval rating. But when asked about overall priorities for the Congress and the president over the next two years, 51 percent said the Iraq war and national security should be the bigger priority, while 33 percent said it should be domestic issues such as the economy and health care. Another 15 percent said national security and domestic issues should be equal priorities.

Whatever the poll results, Dellums’ insistence that news media refocus on Katrina is central to his vision for what needs to be done in Oakland and other cities. It is a vision that seeks to champion the same civic virtues touted by many newspaper editorial boards.

It was one that, ironically, he says, put him at odds with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, which, like the Oakland Tribune, endorsed his chief opponent.

“There are myriad jobs for which Ron Dellums would be eminently more qualified than Ignacio De La Fuente,” a 13-year city councilman: “college president, secretary of state, Washington lobbyist—to name three. Mayor of Oakland is not one of them,” the Chronicle wrote in April.

“Although he thinks big thoughts . . . his goals oftentimes don’t align with the city’s needs,” said the Tribune in May. “Being mayor isn’t like being a congressman. Oakland needs a mayor who can solve problems, not form a committee to study them.”

“It was fascinating how they kept talking down” the job, Dellums said of the Chronicle’s editorial board. “Local government is not [just] about fixing potholes and street signs. I want to flip that around. It’s at the local level where we can begin to change the discussion in America. . . . Martin Luther King said the most revolutionary thing people can do is assert the full measure of their citizenship.. . When you stand up and say, ‘I am a citizen, deal with me,” it also “makes you willing to assume your duties.”

Dellums’ bottom-up argument also applies to coverage of national leaders. “Quit looking at Washington as a place where leaders congregate” and instead see it as one “where mirrors aggregate,” reflecting the sentiments of constituents, he told the columnists.

Dellums started his Washington service in 1971, retiring from elective office in 1998. He dismissed any doubts about the fitness of Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., two of his longtime colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, for the House committee chairmanships they are about to assume. Both were portrayed as bogeymen by Republicans during the midterm campaigns.

“I told Newt Gingrich that I’m prepared to be better than you,” Dellums recalled, because his parents prepared “a young black kid to function in a racist society. John Conyers will be excellent. Rangel will be excellent. They both know their jobs. Kids will see a black person talk about tax policy and Medicare and all of that.” He gave the example of his own ascension in 1993 as chair of the House Armed Services Committee, a post he held until the Republicans regained control of the House in the next year’s elections. He said his mastery of the subject was so thorough that he presented a budget as chair, and then argued against parts of it as representative of his district, he said.

“Glorify some of these elected officials. It may not sell a lot of magazines, but it will educate people,” he said.

When one columnist expressed disappointment in black leadership after Katrina, Dellums turned the question around. “You’re a leader,” he said. “All of us have to assume responsibility for the knowledge we possess.”

Dellums spoke as a committee on the problems of men of African, Hispanic, Asian and Native American descent prepared to release its report. The committee, which he chaired under the auspices of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, urged improved health care and education for people of color and less media consolidation, according to Hope Yen of the Associated Press.

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

Other Perspectives on Election’s Meaning

NATIONAL PICTURE

LOCAL AND STATE RACES

ARIZONA

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

FLORIDA

MARYLAND

MICHIGAN

 

NEVADA

NEW JERSEY

NEW MEXICO

NEW YORK

 

NORTH CAROLINA

OHIO

SOUTH DAKOTA

TENNESSEE

TEXAS

VIRGINIA

WISCONSIN

MESSAGE BOARDS: Feel free to post a comment on this subject and view those from others.

Short Takes

Exit mobile version