Yes, I’m writing about Loretta Lynch-again.
And I’m gonna keep on writing about her, and signing petitions, and making phone calls to the Senate (The Capitol switchboard number is (202) 224-3121). Every day that passes we learn of new atrocities taking place against members of our community, and the god-damned vicious petty demagogues who sit on their larded behinds in seats paid for by our tax dollars refuse to fill one of the most important cabinet positions in this nation. They got no shame.
‘Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo’
(you strike the women, you strike the rock)
Those are the words used by the Federation of South African women when they marched 20,000 strong in 1956 protesting pass laws. These words were echoed in the outcry of women in North Carolina recently…angry about the continued delay in confirming their sister North Carolinian to become Attorney General of the United States.
Reverend Barber has spoken out in an op-ed:
Fear, not racism, at root of delay on Lynch nomination , in which he concluded:
While the Senate fiddles its chorus of hate and division, many segments of our nation are burning. Relations between people of color and the broken “justice” systems in our cities are strained. Thoughtful Justice Department guidance about fixing these dysfunctional systems needs strong, sensible and sober leadership now.
I don’t believe it’s Lynch’s color that has led Burr and Tillis to oppose her for the position, but rather their fear of her character, courage and commitment to enforce the law and Constitution that have been shaped by her upbringing in the crucible civil rights struggle. They have both acknowledged that she is highly qualified and that she would enforce the law. Yet they have also both passed and supported voter suppression laws and positions on civil rights as it relates to immigrants, LGBT people and women that are regressive and currently facing serious legal scrutiny.
I believe they are afraid of an attorney general who will enforce the Constitution to its fullest and not turn a blind eye to the law or blatant discrimination. And in this sense, their opposition to her is about race. It is the attorney general who has the ability to address systemic inequality, which includes racism, sexism, classicism, homophobia, immigration fearmongering or any other “ism” that violates the right of all citizens to equal protection under the law guaranteed by our constitution.
Which is why the delay in the Senate is a shame – for Lynch, for the Department of Justice, for North Carolina and for our nation. Her story personifies the success those in our communities can see when we create opportunity instead of division. When Burr and Tillis return to the Senate after recess, they should lead with a higher moral conviction and confirm their fellow North Carolinian to be the next attorney general.
The news media, and major blogs haven’t been ignoring this. The bullshit Republican promises made that this would be settled as soon as their eminences got back from Easter break have been broken.
Here’s a sampling:
Loretta Lynch AG nomination drags on, leaving her supporters to question why
‘I knew we had a fight on our hands’
Hundreds of miles from Washington, longtime residents of Durham, North Carolina, were beaming with pride. Lynch’s family moved to the city when she was a child. Her parents, married for 60 years, still live there. They watched the announcement on television.
“That was encouraging but I knew then that we had a fight on our hands,” said Lynch’s father, the Rev. Lorenzo Lynch. “I’ve been in politics most of my life. I know that nothing is certain, and I know that nothing is easy.”Lorenzo Lynch, 82, is a retired Baptist preacher and was active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He ran, unsuccessfully, for mayor of Durham in 1973. For the next round of his daughter’s “fight,” he traveled to Washington in late January to attend his daughter’s confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee.
“I heard a lot at that hearing that I’ve heard since childhood. That is the presupposition of the mindset,” Lorenzo Lynch said. “The dual system or the dual treatment.”
When asked to provide specific examples, Lorenzo Lynch deferred to the state branch of the NAACP and E. Lavonia Allison, a Durham activist who has known Loretta Lynch since the family moved to Durham. “I don’t want to think about the epidermis, but some people are thinking that way,” Allison said, suggesting that Lynch’s confirmation vote has been delayed because Lynch is African-American.
“When it has taken so long, when it has been so different from any other person who has been nominated … how else can we interpret that it is so different?” Allison said.
Loretta Lynch Now Has All the GOP Votes She Needs-but She’s Still No Closer to Being Confirmed
Lawmakers return to Washington this week following a two-week spring break. Loretta Lynch, meanwhile, remains stuck in procedural purgatory with little to suggest that the partisan fighting that has trapped her there will end anytime soon.
It has now been more than five months since President Obama formally tapped Lynch to replace U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder atop the Department of Justice, and more than one month since the Judiciary Committee finally got around to officially signing off on her nomination. Despite that extended delay-which has now lasted longer than the combined time the previous eight nominees for the job had to wait for confirmation-Senate Republicans have made it clear that they won’t give Lynch a vote until the chamber settles an unrelated, and potentially unending, fight over abortion funding in a human trafficking bill currently stalled in the upper chamber.
Kentucky was not an accidental choice by Toni Morrison for the horrific origin of her Nobel-prize winning classic, Beloved. Sweet Home, the Kentucky plantation in Morrison’s story, represents America and how the depravity of American slavery required destroying any sign of excellence among Africans who lived there.
Fast forward more than 100 years from Morrison’s novel: the United States Senate, still in the first days of Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s leadership, has chosen to advance this shameful legacy of ignoring black excellence by delaying the confirmation of Loretta Lynch to the position of attorney general. The Senate leadership’s deafening silence over the past four months extends a disgrace that predates this nation’s Constitution.
Lynch has earned the respect and admiration of her colleagues, supervisors and even the Senate Judiciary Committee over her spectacular career. Her recent prosecutions of Citibank and HSBC demonstrate a commitment to the law that will inspire a new generation of legal minds in the 21st century. Her record of sustained excellence does not deserve the smug derision that partisan senators have offered this year. Yet, their recalcitrance should have been anticipated, as this continues the historic demagoguery we have witnessed over the last six years.
Michelle Bernard, a black independent conservative stated in “How Senate Republicans’ Stalling Loretta Lynch Paves the Way for Hillary Clinton“:
In their blind devotion to saying no to all-things-Obama, members of the right wing have proven yet again that they are willing to sacrifice the health and well-being of our democratic system to draw blood from their commander in chief as he prepares to leave the White House in just two very short years. But in bludgeoning Obama, they also bloody the republic, dismantling the rights and protections of women and minority groups in their bumbling effort to get the man who could not be gotten. Are these extremists racists? Are they sexist? These become moot points when they are willing to directly assault those most different from them to get to a man they were unable to defeat in 2008 or 2012.
Republicans have been unsuccessful in all of their attempts to beat the president at the ballot box, break him or get him to genuflect as they see fit. He’s taken them head-on and refused to bow or accept their disrespect. So great is the hatred of some against the president, that they are willing to keep the much-maligned Eric Holder in place rather than give the president a vote on his nominee.
This strategy would make sense if it were a winning one, but in light of changing demographics, it trades logic for the instant gratification of trolling Lynch’s nomination with abortion fights and amnesty digs, believing they will only be riling the opposition, forgetting all the women, African Americans, Latinos, LGBT people and others caught in their wake of hate.
These fools think they are simply dissin’ the President. Well they are dissin’ us all.
Give em a call.
Cross-posted from Black Kos
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