    
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2064
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, April 15, 2006 - 11:30 am: | 
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White Ex Cop Speaks Out About a Georgia Congresswoman
April 11, 2006 1000 PST (FTW) - ASHLAND -Cynthia McKinney is a
friend of mine. Until the day I die she will be a friend of mine.
More than that, she will be a role model and an inspiration that I
don't ever expect to be equaled, let alone surpassed. Full
disclosure.
Out of several dozen Op-Eds, news reports and commentaries on the
now-infamous so-called "cop-slapping" event of March 29th, I haven't
seen a single one that, from my perspective, got it right. So right
up front, let me say that if I am forced to look at this one
snapshot incident, divorced from context and history, then yes, my
very good friend messed up. It shouldn't have become as big a deal
as it has and she bears some responsibility for that. But if I look
at the event as part of a continuum of the life of congress, or the
life of this nation, and (no less importantly) of the life of this
woman, things look and feel a whole lot different.
The virulent, spit-dripping, white, racist commentators from Boortz
to DeLay and the oh-so-PC and dainty black Democratic pundits,
columnists and pols who pick Cynthia McKinney apart—pretending to
defend her while putting her black butt on the E-Bay auction block
for November—are actually allies. They both want her to go away.
They both want the issues that have come too close to public
recognition in this case to go away. Leaders from left and right,
black or white, cannot bear the thought of actually looking deeper
at what happened with Cynthia McKinney and what it means.
Let me give you an historical hint. As a rule, wars are generally
started over big events, (e.g. the assassination of Archduke Francis
Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, North Korea's Army Crossing the 38th
parallel). Revolutions are generally started over less memorable
things (e.g. "Let them eat cake," a tea tax, some government troops
opening fire on unarmed demonstrators). People of all colors and
political persuasions understand that underlying both wars and
revolutions are monstrous icebergs of unresolved inequity. So it is
with Cynthia McKinney. And it is her hairdo (new or old, take your
pick) that now sits atop an iceberg that both right-wing whites and
bought-off blacks would like to go away.
I have walked the halls of Congress with Cynthia McKinney maybe
eight to ten times. I have walked into and out of the Cannon and
Longworth house office buildings with her. I have walked to hearings
in the Rayburn house office building with her. I have walked the
underground tunnels from one of those office buildings directly to
the edge of the House floor and its anteroom with her. I can tell
you one thing for certain because I have seen it and I have felt it.
Cynthia McKinney and her staff get treated differently from just
about anyone else on the Hill. It's subtle, but so is the taste of
dirt when it's in your mouth.
ICEBERGS
Between 1974 and 1977, as I prowled the streets of "The Jungle" in
South Central L.A. (in uniform and later as a detective and
undercover narc) I knew little about being human. The Jungle is the
place where "Boyz in the Hood" and Denzel Washington's "Training
Day" were filmed. I was a good cop, a very good cop. I didn't have
any sustained personnel complaints. My rating reports were
always "outstanding." The law-abiding citizens by and large trusted
me when they saw me. My liberal education at UCLA had at least
partially sensitized me to a world that seemed impossible to
understand—a world that scared me just as much as it enticed me with
its opportunities for heroism, peer recognition, and self-
acceptance. My father had been a war hero and I wanted to know if I
was cut from the same cloth.
I was known for being aggressive; eager to embrace danger; a
budding, brilliant investigator; and an unmatched report writer. I
was a "hard-charger" as they called it in those days. Perhaps the
best role model I had as a cop was a black LAPD Captain by the name
of Jesse A. Brewer who also taught me about leadership, friendship
and loyalty.
I didn't need to beat up innocent people because the streets where I
worked were full of guilty people: robbers, burglars, heroin
dealers, wife beaters, rapists, and car thieves. I was on the
streets (and not far away) the night the Symbionese Liberation Army
were roasted like marshmallows after making the mistake of trying to
shoot it out with my brothers in blue. We were all men in those
days, no women. I was on the streets for months before and after the
time when every LA cop had a fear of making a routine traffic stop
and facing an automatic weapon, a rocket launcher, a bomb, or a
Molotov cocktail. Tense times.
For several years I averaged between 20 and 30 felony arrests per
month—good arrests. Who had time to go after innocent people just
because they were black? Also in those days, I also used the
word "nigger" about 15 times a day. It was the culture. It was my
ignorance. In the 1970s, LAPD reports used the official word Negro
to describe African-Americans and before I joined LAPD in 1973 I had
seen or talked to only around 20 black people in my whole life:
maids, taxi drivers, bellmen—you know "colored people." I talked
like those around me talked. I thought it was cool.
As front-page stories in the Herald Examiner described me in 1981, I
was "… a white kid from Orange County in a blue uniform sent to a
black ghetto."
The one thing I could not understand for about fifteen years after
that was the maybe half-dozen different black men who had approached
me in futility and rage, tearing open their shirts and looking at me
with absolute sincerity as they said, "Shoot me. Go ahead, shoot me.
I got nothing to lose." They meant it, and it mattered not at all
what the last incident was that had taken place before they snapped
with that sublime mix of rage and complete despair. A lifetime of
inequalities, social and economic; injustices, past and present; and
frustrations, ever present; had pushed those men beyond their
breaking point. It took me a while to get to that point, but I got
there too, and now I understood something about being black.
Through two decades of 12-Step work, intense spiritual effort and
personal therapy I have seen my errors, felt genuine remorse, and
made my amends. One of those amends came in 1996 when—in a face-to-
face confrontation with a CIA director—I challenged the same
government I had once protected for smuggling hundreds of tons of
cocaine into the United States, where much of it was intentionally
routed to the inner cities.
Since then, and on more than one occasion, Black America, and black
individuals in America have saved my life. No one rushed to take a
bullet for me. No, what was done for me was to give me acceptance,
support, friendship, a meal and some soul. You can do a lot with a
little bit of soul.
Among all of the African Americans I know—and there are many—Cynthia
McKinney stands head and shoulders above the rest. Screw her hairdo;
It's the woman's mind and heart that need to be considered here.
Flash forward a couple of decades from the late 1970s.
It's now 2000 and my little newsletter From The Wilderness is
steadily growing as we look at issues like US Government covert
operations in Colombia, death squads, the global drug trade, the
prison-industrial complex, drug money flowing into Al Gore's
presidential campaign, PROMIS software and a then little-known
company named Halliburton. My friend Al Giordano of the Narco News
Bulletin brought Cynthia McKinney to my attention. I emailed her and
she responded almost immediately.
There was an immediate friendship. Cynthia McKinney was the first
member of congress I had met (about 15 at the time) who actually
seemed to be a human being who actually gave a hoot and who actually
comprehended all the government criminality people were talking
about. She responded to emails. She took phone calls. She actually
cut checks from the Treasury to subscribe to FTW. She bought our
videos and reports and…she read them. She handed them out.
She asked questions and didn't pretend to know everything. She read.
She listened. She understood.
And then came 9/11.
There are millions of Americans who still have major unanswered
questions about the attacks of September 11th. Some are wives,
husbands, and children of the victims. Some, like me, are
investigative journalists. Many are just average people who could
never swallow the galactic inconsistencies of the government account
and who have refused to succumb to pressure for conformity. Cynthia
McKinney was the one to ask "What did the Bush administration know
and when did it know it?" about the scores of detailed warnings
received by the administration in the months before the attacks.
Contrary to one account from a black commentator recently, she has
never retracted that question.
For that question, she was tarred and feathered in the press. From
her long-standing support of Palestinian rights and objections to
Israeli strong-arm tactics in the occupied territories emerged a new
double-edged motive to remove her from congress at all costs.
Cynthia McKinney was an un-American, anti-Semitic supporter of
terrorists!
An Oreo black candidate named Denise Majette emerged as lots of
money poured from the coffers of the American Israeli Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) funded not only a hate campaign against McKinney,
but in support of her opponent as well. Illegally, thousands of
Republican voters crossed over to vote for the Oreo in the primary
while the seat stayed safely Democratic, and all were quietly
relieved when Cynthia didn't even make it to the general election.
Cynthia McKinney will tell you that I and the entire 9/11 movement
stayed with her loyally throughout her two-year imposed vacation.
And I believe she will tell you that it was in part because we
organized fundraisers for her and kept her name out there that she
made it back—to everyone's surprise except ours—in 2004.
Cynthia McKinney had been the only member of congress to ask real
questions about 9/11. And she didn't stop or forget when she got
back either. More than that, she continued to do—no matter what—the
things that her conscience bade her to do as an African-American
woman who is anything but a racist (unless you want to refer to the
human race). In hearings she questioned Donald Rumsfeld about the
multitude of wargame exercises I had identified in my book Crossing
the Rubicon. She asked repeated questions about 9/11 in repeated
hearings and no one on the Democratic side backed her up when her
questions were brushed aside, ignored and forgotten. She also kept
up her support for the rights of the oppressed everywhere and she
didn't change one single note of her sheet music or its cadence.
She held the only hearing on Capitol Hill where investigators,
authors, and families questioning the official version of 9/11 had a
voice. She invited me, Wayne Madsen and Ray McGovern to act as
questioners at that hearing, and she was the only member of congress
to sit through that hearing.
She was there for the victims of Katrina and Rita who fled as
refugees to Atlanta last fall. She was there to protect black
culture and black history through her Tupac bill. She was there for
her constituents and for all of the disenfranchised, battered,
demoralized, and desperate Americans of all colors who had come to
see her as "the politician of last resort."
PLATE TECTONICS
Almost every armchair pundit (left or right) who has criticized
Cynthia McKinney has told only part of her story.
When she was returned to congress, her party, overlooking well-
documented procedure with a number of historical precedents, refused
to give her back the seniority to which she was entitled. In terms
of committee assignments, instead of being a six-term senior member
of her committees, she was a freshman. This placed her last on the
list of questioners, last in terms of pecking order, last in terms
of recognition, and last in terms of agenda setting. She was denied
her old spot on the House Foreign Relations committee. She was moved
further and further away from the coveted and influential title
of "ranking member" that she should have been approaching. Should
the House revert back to Democratic control this year she might have
even chaired a committee. God forbid!
They did throw the Negro woman McKinney a bone in the form of a
nicer office than before (the only place where her true seniority
was recognized). "Here bitch, drive this Cadillac and shut up!"
While House Democratic leadership under Nancy Pelosi of California
has been brutal to Cynthia McKinney, the treatment afforded her by
the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has been equally despicable.
Not only did the CBC not fight for McKinney's legitimate seniority,
it also seems that they have taken pleasure in snubbing her.
Solidarity my ass.
One anecdote paints the picture pretty clearly.
Last fall, after I had acted as a questioner for two panels
sponsored by McKinney at the CBC's annual convention, I was
surprised as she handed me a ticket to the CBC formal banquet. This
is a big annual event and I sat just a few tables away from John
Kerry. Howard Dean was a few tables past Kerry. More than a thousand
people, dressed to the nines, filled a crowded ballroom.
Cynthia was a no-show and it didn't take long to figure out why. As
every black member of Congress was introduced by seniority, starting
with the Honorable John Conyers of Michigan, Cynthia McKinney's name
was saved for last. Even the Congressional Black Caucus could not
recognize a sister's seniority and service, not even when it
wouldn't have cost them a thing.
Where was Cynthia during that dinner? She wasn't there. She was off
violating a direct order from Nancy Pelosi not to attend a massive
anti-war rally on the Mall. She was standing with Cindy Sheehan. She
was giving a speech denouncing the war in Iraq and the Bush
administration. She was doing her job. I sat at McKinney's table
next to my ad hoc dinner partner Kathleen Cleaver, weeping over the
insult on McKinney. Not once since have I seen Cynthia McKinney even
flinch over it.
I have watched Cynthia McKinney quietly and gracefully endure
monstrous insults, sleights and provocations that I could never keep
silent over. I have watched the world wait for a misplaced burp or
worse from her and I have watched her refuse to take the bait on at
least fifty occasions.
Are revolutions started because those in revolt rise to offered
bait? I think not.
In the case of Cynthia McKinney and the Capitol Hill Police officer,
I, like the rest of those reading this story, have not seen what
happened. There may be a tape that will surface at some point as we
wait to see whether a grand jury will indict her on idiotic charges
of assault. I don't know whether the Capitol Hill Cop was white or
black, young or old, a rookie or a veteran. I wish it all hadn't
happened and I'd bet Cynthia feels the same way.
But then again…
THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT OF MY LIFE
In the spring of 2004 as I was arranging a speech and fundraiser for
Cynthia McKinney in Los Angeles wherein we visited a small local
museum of the civil rights movement. It was only about two miles
from where I had once worked. Pictures of Martin Luther King and
Bobby Kennedy triggered painful memories for me. As I stood
transfixed looking at a picture taken circa 1965 of an LAPD black
and white with two helmeted officers wielding batons high above
their heads in a street fight with blacks, Cynthia McKinney walked
up and stood beside me. Quietly, so that only I could hear she
said, "That's what you used to do when you used to be white."
Human being.
John Kennedy and even Dwight Eisenhower were forgiven for having
affairs. Bill Clinton was forgiven for a dozen crimes. Ronald Reagan
was forgiven for everything. Who will dare call it justice when and
if Cynthia McKinney is not forgiven and approved of for being real?
There is an easy way for most people to avoid reaching their limits
and the risk of being embarrassed. The first rule is: don't do
anything risky. Don't stretch the envelope.
With 2,400 American KIA in Iraq, with the US economy ever-shrinking
for the poor and middle classes, with US government corruption
reeking like a rotting Elephant in the African sun, with voting
rights being violated in a gentrifying and whitening New Orleans,
with the crimes of 9/11 not only unsolved but covered up by both
Democrats and Republicans, there would seem to be many reasons why
the envelope needs to be ripped apart a bit.
I have little hope for it now. All the "just get along" folks seem
to be winning the day and my friend Cynthia McKinney has some big
choices ahead for her. I and many others will be doing all we can
from around the country to get her re-elected again this year if
that's what she asks.
But let me say this clearly: If Cynthia McKinney wants to start a
revolution over a cop who touched her, or anything else, I'll
welcome it and I know damn well which side I'll be on.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/041106_beloved_mckinney.sht
ml
by
Michael C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2006, From The Wilderness Publications,
www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted,
distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit
purposes only.
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