Cynthia McKinney
The art of leadership and the fight for justice
What role outrage?
22 September 2011 (the morning after)
After Georgia was forced by the United States Supreme Court to abandon its
scheme to deny Black people the right to an undiluted vote and
representation, Leroy Johnson became the first Black person elected to the
Georgia State Senate since Reconstruction. The year was 1962. During his
tenure, Johnson used his considerable influence inside the body to become
the Senate's Chair of the Judiciary Committee. From this position, he was
able to bottle-up legislation that was bad for the State of Georgia,
especially its Black residents. Outside and inside the State Senate, Leroy
Johnson practiced the art of leadership and engaged in the fight for
justice. He produced solid results for a people who were hungry for
justice. Who among our elected officials today exercises the art of
leadership in an engaged struggle for justice? Sadly, the numbers are way
too small. It is more expedient to exchange silence for merely being
there, in the end exercising no leadership at all and becoming a spectator
to power in abandonment of those who need the effective use of power the
most. The art of the struggle has veritably been abandoned for merely
occupying a seat at the table when the purpose of the struggle for the seat
at the table was to empower the struggle for justice. The only reason we
send people to occupy that seat is to leverage the power of the community
where power is exercised, on behalf of those who need it the most.
As I was commiserating over the Troy Davis situation with a former member
of the Georgia Legislature who rose to the highest possible position within
that body for his party, he lamented that for all of his years in the
Legislature, he had not introduced a single death penalty bill. I quickly
interjected that he was so busy putting out other fires and sticking his
fingers in all the holes of the leaky dikes and schooling his colleagues on
the effective use of the power of their elected positions that he couldn't
do everything. It will be interesting to see what legislative actions his
former colleagues will initiate in the face of this clear act of barbarism
by my state.
Occupying these seats at the table is important. Engaging in the
struggle for justice is important. And contrary to what many would have us
believe, leadership is important. That's why so much effort is spent on
co-opting or marginalizing the leaders of conscience that we do have and
preventing authentic representatives of our values to occupy those seats at
the table.
Therefore, more is required of us. We must hone the skill of discernment.
We must not give our vote to just anybody to occupy these positions of
power. We must not allow posers to represent us. Posers are those who
wear the jackets of authority, who are put in positions of power by us, but
who do not engage in the artful use of that power on our behalf. Discerning
who is friend and who is poser has been difficult. But, is being made more
possible by the arrogance now of those who do not have the interests of the
people at heart. They seem not to care that their neanderthal is showing.
But we can look at them and clearly see that they ain't us. Their actions
are a clue that they do not share our values.
Unfortunately, posers exist all around us: and in the media, too. The job
now of people of conscience is to make sure that we don't enable these
posers by our own supportive behavior. My friend reminded me that Leroy
Johnson, alone in the Georgia State Senate, was more powerful in the 1960s
than are the 55 Black members of the Georgia Legislature now. We need to
stop and think about that.
More is less? What role have we all had to play in such a circumstance?
Is our leadership more of a reflection of who we are than we have
acknowledged? What can we do differently in order to get a better result?
Abu Ghraib has its antecedents right here in the United States. The
violence sponsored by the United States abroad has its origins inside the
United States. As the United States and NATO drop bombs on unsubmitting
African people in Libya, the United States kills an innocent Black man in
Georgia. There is more to come unless we affirmatively take steps to stop
it. Republican voters cheered at the prospects of more executions at a
recent Presidential debate. In a recent article,
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=65344, Africom brags on its
lessons learned from Libya:
The command had to define what effects it needed, and what specific
targets would contribute to achieving those effects – a precise endeavor,
Ham said. If attacking a communications node, planners must ask themselves
what does that particular node do? How does it connect to other nodes?
What’s the right munition to use? What’s the likelihood of collateral
damage? What’s the right time of day to hit it? What’s the right delivery
