Posted on 10/21/2003 5:05:50 AM PDT by randita
Posted on Tue, Oct. 21, 2003
BUG REVIVES SAD HISTORY
AFRICAN-AMERICANS TROUBLED BY SIMILARITY TO PAST PROBES
GINO BANKS, a 40-year-old truck driver from North Philadelphia, is a rare Philadelphia voter - an African-American who says he is a registered Republican.
And he was thinking briefly about voting for his party's mayoral candidate, Sam Katz - until he heard about the FBI bug in Mayor Street's office.
"Because of the scandal, I'm voting for Street because they're giving him an unfair deal," Banks said yesterday. "If they wanted to do this, they could have done this months and weeks ago. You do this four weeks before an election? This is slimy and dirty. It's election time, and they're trying to drag him through the mud."
With Election Day exactly two weeks away, there's a powerful force that's shaping Philadelphia's big decision for mayor - a genie that's been let out of the bottle and can't be shoved back in.
Street's angry backers shout it across the city, in rallies and on talk radio. Katz's supporters struggle to understand it and to come up with a political strategy for dealing with it.
Call it black rage.
For many Philadelphians, the bugging of Street's office by federal agents strikes a raw nerve, reminding them of other times - in history or their own lives - when blacks were treated unfairly.
"I would tell you, as a fully mature African-American male, that you can't go to a time in FBI history that there haven't been investigations and uses of power that have been improper, relative to the African-American community," said U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, who has emerged as a leading political voice of that rage.
While many talk about the FBI's bugging of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the J. Edgar Hoover years, Fattah has unleashed a much broader barrage, from secret files on baseball hero Jackie Robinson to a discrimination case by black FBI agents settled just last year.
Others, however, insist the complaints are born of paranoia and an unwillingness to learn more facts about possible wrongdoing in the Street administration.
With more questions than answers about the federal probe so far, most political insiders believe the uproar in City Hall clearly isn't hurting the mayor - and, in fact, seems to be helping him. At least one poll has shown an upsurge for Street since the FBI listening device was discovered.
While Street was once seen as an aloof fiscal conservative who didn't even excite his own base of black supporters, his current plight has energized many Democrats in a way that his personality never did. Street, too, seems suddenly invigorated on the stump.
"We are the party of the people!" the mayor thundered yesterday, accepting the endorsement of state Auditor General Robert Casey.
The racial arguments have been blasted by many in the media, as well as by Katz, but they resonate with many rank-and-file voters.
Carol Davis, 50, a saleswoman at a local department store who is black, said she is more behind Street than ever. "People think this is a sham," Davis said of the federal probe, her voice filled with anger.
"We're for Street, and the more mud they throw, the more we're determined to vote for him. White men have been controlling blacks for years, and now we have the vote - and we're going to do what we want."
Fattah, in criticizing the FBI probe, has noted that many federal investigations of black officials have damaged reputations but resulted in no charges.
The FBI bugged the townhouse of Coleman Young, the mayor of Detroit for more than two decades, and Young was secretly taped in the mayor's mansion by a former friend and confidant. In one 1970s probe, the city's ranking police officer quit and another committed suicide, but no one was charged. Young was never accused of a crime.
But Fattah is a political insider. To most black people in everyday walks of life, the case that still really grates is from the 1960s, when the FBI bugged King in his motel bedrooms and when Hoover called the civil rights leader "the most notorious liar in the country."
Taylor Branch, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his King biography, "Parting the Waters," said yesterday that the irony is that, in the 1960s, King and other black leaders were still looking to the FBI and the Justice Department for help in combating Southern discrimination.
"The mistrust of the government was different then," said Branch, recalling that King even sent congratulatory letters to FBI agents he deemed helpful. The bugging of King was known to some insiders but "kept largely in secret. They didn't want to alienate the government because they had to cultivate it."
But mistrust of the feds among blacks grew as the FBI's misdeeds involving King became widely known in the 1970s and '80s. The inept crack-cocaine sting operation against Washington Mayor Marion Barry in 1990 that resulted in only a misdemeanor conviction cemented that mistrust.
In Florida in 2000, black voters were upset because they thought they were mistreated at the polls and that in their view the presidential election was stolen. Today they view the Philadelphia case as a continuation of dirty politics.
Those history lessons don't impress every voter - especially many of those who were planning to vote for Katz before the bugging flap.
Bike messenger Gabe Gonzalez, 18, a Latino from the Northeast, said he believed the investigation was not motivated by race. "I think that's a pretty lame excuse to use," he said in Center City. "I think he's just using it to get more voters on his side. All's fair in war, you know."
But Thommie Hampton, a 39-year-old African-American from West Philadelphia who was loading his pickup truck at the Home Depot store on Delaware Avenue last night, does see the probe of Street as part of a pattern.
"It's history repeating itself, you know," said Hampton, who plans to vote for the mayor in November. "The FBI's got power - they've been doing it for years...Street's been doing a good job. I believe they should leave him alone, let him do his job."
Not every black person agrees. Ann R. Jordan, a 67-year-old Wynnefield woman and former national Democratic committeewoman, is voting for Katz and isn't ashamed to say so. However, she understands the angry response from some African-Americans.
"I understand that there have been times in all of our lives when things happened to us because we're black," she said. "But at some point we have to be able to look at the facts."
© 2003 Philadelphia Daily News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.philly.com
Sympathy vote? Please.
This woman has my vote for most intelligent voter in Philly.
And ChakaChan Fatah? He's a race baiter and Xlinton kool aid drinker. He'll gladly light the match that will start the fires, as long as he gets his face time on TV to denounce it.
LOL. If I'd authored this piece of bilge, I'd leave it anonymous, too.
Washinton DC school dist. Compton Ca, Gary Ind. So Africa, All of Black Africa for that mater, on and on.
First, there are no Black Republicans in Philadelphia, so you know the article is a lie. Second, is there any way we can deed this hideous, alleged city to New Jersey? West Camden sounds like a damn fine name.
Maybe 10 years ago when this was posted there were a couple.
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