Political strategist, Donna Brazile issues dire warning that democracy is under attack

25th February 2019   ·   0 Comments

By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer

Donna Brazile returned to her hometown of New Orleans during Black History Month and issued a dire warning: “Our democracy is broken; all of our institutions are under water.”

Brazile was in town to deliver the Charles Frye Memorial Lecture at Southern University in New Orleans. She was invited to do the keynote address by university’s Center for African and African American Studies.

The Charity Hospital born Brazile is a political icon, who has worked for the past fifty years to hold the Democratic Party accountable to their most loyal voters, African-Americans. A policy wonk, Brazile says its not enough to want inclusion. “Elections have consequences. We must lobby them and engage them. Whether you vote or not, politicians will pass laws that affect our lives.”

At a time when Donald Trump is serving only 30 percent of the U.S. population and making end runs around Congress to seize power and money, he continues to vilify people of color and use them as justification for massive oppressive policy changes that could lead to an authoritarian form of government.

About Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s blackface incident, Brazile comments, “We know Michael Jackson was not in blackface. Blackface is done purposefully as a mental influence.”

And while African Americans are reviewing the progress made by captured and enslaved Africans and their descendants, in this the 400th Anniversary year of Africans being brought to Jamestown, Virginia to be sold into slavery, the gains African Americans have made are being threatened.

“Can the Democratic Party Continue to Usher African Americans into the American Mainstream?” was the topic of Brazile’s address. “No.” Brazile answered. “Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation under pressure from the abolitionists, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act as a result of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It was your body and brains that got you to freedom, she told students and community members.

“We need to remember our history because other people want to forget our history,” she advises. Brazile is a visionary. She foretold the state of democratic politics 20 years ago. She warned the Democratic National Committee, of which she was interim chair, twice, that the future of the party is diversity; that African Americans, women, gays, and other people of color would comprise the democratic base.

Brazile this month made another prediction. “Over the next 20, 30, or 50 years, only seven states will have majority white populations. North and South Dakota, Maine, Montana, Vermont, Alaska, and Minnesota.”

“No one is going to give (African Americans) power. We have to leverage our power. We have earned the right to make decisions for us.”

“We are the future of the United States,” says Brazile. “It’s our time. We need Black History Month because racism is still with us. Over the past three years, there has been 700 reported incidences of hate crimes. Three out of five were motivated by race.”

After her speech, Brazile told The Louisiana Weekly that in spite of ongoing efforts to undermine the Black vote, including voter suppression, gerrymandering, absentee ballot trickery, and cyber-hacking, “Elections have consequences.”

“We now have 55 members in the Congressional Black Caucus and several African-Americans are chairing important committees in Congress, including Reps. Maxine Waters, Bobby Scott, Eddie Bernice Johnson, and Elijah Cummings. African-Americans now wield more power than ever. We have the historic opportunity to advance the cause of equal justice.”

This year marks Brazile’s 21st year on the Democratic National Committee. I’m still fighting for equal justice under the law.” America needs a 21st Century Voting Rights Act, if equal justice is to be achieved.

“The 1965 Voting Rights Act is too weak to fight the new tricks and hurdles to black political participation. We need universal registration, same day registration, restoration of ex-felons’ voting right.

“We need to close the racial wage gap. I’m tired of being paid less than white men and women,” Brazile explains. In the 21st century, we need to focus on science and technology but we need to be at the table to draft policies. We need new policies that eliminate mass incarceration, foreign policy that helps underserved nations in Africa and Latin America. And climate change is not the weather. It’s much deeper.”

The best way for African Americans to move forward, she says, to get involved.

Brazile, the founder and managing director of Brazile and Associates, was born in New Orleans and reared in Kenner. She started her political career at age 9, when she passed out campaign literature for a City Council candidate. She got her playground.

Since then, Brazile has made an indelible mark on politics and African American history. “I prepared myself by working in every election I could. Brazile remembers going to Washington, D.C. with $150 in her pocket.

To date she has worked on every presidential campaign beginning in 1976. In 2000, Brazile made history as the first African-American woman to lead a major president campaign. Al Gore lost to George W. Bush by 567 votes. Undeterred, Brazile went on to work on the Obama and Clinton campaigns. She has worked on 56 congressional campaigns; 19 state and local campaigns and she has worked in 49 states. She has appeared on numerous television shows as a political commentator.

Beyond politics, Brazile is an adjunct professor of Gender and Women Studies at Georgetown University and the 2018-2019 Gwendolyn S. and Colbert I. King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University. At Howard she is hosting a five-part lecture series to engage the Howard community on several subjects, including politics, voting, criminal justice reform, and civility.

Brazile’s secret passion, she admits, is acting. She has appeared in two episodes of the CBS drama “The Good Wife.”

New Orleans is full of colorful characters and Brazile is no exception. Her roots, humor, and tongue-in-cheek criticisms emerge in both her public appearances and her books: Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in America; Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House; and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics, published in 2018, which Brazile co-authored. For Colored Girls documents the work of four African-American political strategists, including Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore.

Always ready for a trip home, Brazile will share the stage with some of America’s most power African-American women at the Power Rising Summit, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Orleans, from February 22nd – 24th, 2019. Last year’s summit in Atlanta brought together Black women across ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, political affiliation, socio- economic status, and gender experience.

The 2019 Power Rising Summit includes special guests Georgia Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, Sen. Kamala Harris, author, educator, and commentator, Melissa Harris-Perry, Congresswoman Karen Bass, Beverly E. Smith, President, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Linda Goler Blount, MPH, President & CEO of Black Women’s Health Imperative, and Reverend Traci Blackmon, the Executive Minister of Justice & Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ.

This article originally published in the February 25, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.