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EDUCATIONCAREERS Special Edition
O PINION
August 24, 2016
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Standing on the Shoulders of Shirley Chisholm
A historic path
in the race for
president
m arC h. m orial
The nation has
marked the historic
occasion of the first
woman in American
history to win the
presidential nomina-
tion for a major political party.
While Hillary Clinton has
come further than any woman
presidential candidate, she is not
the first. Victoria Woodhull ran as
the candidate for the Equal Rights
Party in 1872. Margaret Chase
Smith challenged Barry Goldwa-
ter for the Republican nomina-
tion in 1964. More recently, Pat
Schroeder in 1988 and Carol Mo-
seley Braun in 2004 vied for the
Democratic nomination.
But the most historically sig-
by
nificant forerunner to Hillary
Clinton was Shirley Chisholm,
the Brooklyn-born trailblazer
who was also the nation’s first
African-American
Con-
gresswoman.
The daughter of work-
ing-class immigrants from
the Caribbean, Chisholm
became interested in pol-
itics while serving as the
director of a child day care
center and an educational
consultant for the New York City
Division of Day Care. She served
three years as a New York State
Assemblywoman before running
for Congress in 1968 with the slo-
gan “Unbought and unbossed”.
“My greatest political asset,”
Chisholm said, “which profes-
sional politicians fear, is my
mouth, out of which come all
kinds of things one shouldn’t al-
ways discuss for reasons of polit-
ical expediency.”
Chisholm hired only women
for her staff, half of whom were
African Americans. “Of my two
handicaps, being female put
many more obstacles in my path
than being black,” she said.
She announced her candidacy
for president at a Baptist church
in Brooklyn. In an article about
her candidacy, the Associated
Press wrote, “Ironically, her ma-
jor headache seems to come from
black politicians.”
“They think that I am trying to
take power away from them,” she
said. “The black man must step
forward. But that doesn’t mean
the black woman must step back.
“While they’re rapping and
snapping, I’m mapping,” she
said.
She competed in 14 states,
winning 28 delegates to the con-
vention. As a symbolic gesture,
candidate Hubert Humphrey re-
leased his 83 Black delegates to
cast their votes for Chisholm.
With the votes of several other
delegates at that contentious con-
vention, Chisolm finished fourth
in a field of 13, with 152 dele-
gates.
It is hard to imagine, in this
era of sharp division in politics,
the remarkable moment during
that campaign when she visited
her segregationist rival, Alabama
Gov. George Wallace, in his hos-
pital room after he was shot and
wounded. “What are your people
going to say?” he asked her. “I
know what they are going to say,”
she said. “But I wouldn’t want
what happened to you to happen
to anyone.” She recalled that her
words moved him to tears.
Chisholm retired from Con-
gress in 1982 and remained an
outspoken activist for civil rights
until her death in 2005.
It would be difficult to overes-
timate the impact and influence
of Chisholm’s congressional
service and presidential candi-
dacy. While Congress remains
disproportionately white and
male, one-in-five members of the
current House and Senate are a
racial or ethnic minority, mak-
ing the 114th Congress the most
diverse in history. The nation’s
first African-American president
is winding up his second term,
and a woman – a former senator
and secretary of state – has just
won the Democratic nomination
for president.
In her acclaimed speech on
the Equal Rights Amendment in
1970, Chisholm said, “The Con-
stitution they wrote was designed
to protect the rights of white,
male citizens. As there were no
black founding fathers, there
were no founding mothers -- a
great pity, on both counts. It is
not too late to complete the work
they left undone. Today, here, we
should start to do so.”
Marc H. Morial is president
and chief executive officer of the
National Urban League.
Russian Connection a Window on How Trump Deals
A narrow and
dangerous view
of world affairs
Friday), was on the take with the
former pro-Russian Ukraine pres-
ident should come as no surprise.
Even before the Times report, we
knew that Manafort was a well-
paid economic adviser to Presi-
dent Viktor Yanukovych on
by m el g urtov
election strategy and foreign
The revelation
investments. What we now
from a New York
know is that he was among
Times
investiga-
a substantial number of in-
tion that Donald
dividuals who may have re-
Trump’s
chief
ceived millions of dollars in
campaign
advis-
illegal,
under-the-table payments
er, Paul Manafort (who resigned
The Law Offices of
Patrick John Sweeney, P.C.
Patrick John Sweeney
Attorney at Law
1549 SE Ladd, Portland, Oregon
Portland:
Hillsoboro:
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Email:
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or gifts from a Ukraine adminis-
tration that was up to its neck in
corrupt practices. Whether or not
Manafort actually received the
$12.7 million designated for him
by Yanukovych’s party, the fact is
he profited from a close associa-
tion with a pro-Russian govern-
ment—an association that surely
helps account for the pro-Russian
views of Trump himself.
But the real story here is the in-
sight it provides into how a Trump
administration would conduct
foreign policy. In a nutshell, it’s
“the art of the deal.” Regardless
of who might be on the other side
of the table—Vladimir Putin, Xi
Jinping, Angela Merkel, or En-
rique Peña Nieto, the president
of Mexico—Trump’s guideline
would be that business interests
are central to the national inter-
est. Anyone unfriendly to the U.S.
dollar would be an enemy, subject
to sanctions. After all, the art of
the deal is to win, and for Trump
“winning is everything. I can only
say: my whole life has been about
winning.”
Neither U.S. strategic priorities
nor “idealist” concerns such as hu-
man rights and civil society would
be allowed to interfere with cut-
ting a deal. As another of Trump’s
foreign policy advisers, Carter
Page, said, “ironically, Washing-
ton and other Western capitals
have impeded potential progress
[with Moscow] through their of-
ten hypocritical focus on ideas
such as democratization, inequali-
ty, corruption and regime change.”
Thus, if Mexico balked at pay-
ing for the Trump Wall, Trump
would have no qualms about
punishing Mexico economically.
If China pushed back at the U.S.
navy in the South China Sea,
Trump might erect barriers to
Chinese imports. As for Russia,
where Trump, Page, Manafort,
and other advisers already have
business ties, investments are
perceived as the key to moder-
ating U.S.-Russia relations and
thus “solving” disputes over
Crimea and Ukraine.
In Trump’s world, everyone
has a price. He has often told the
story of how his view of China
is mainly shaped by the sale of a
Trump Tower apartment to a Chi-
nese banker. Despite that profit-
able venture, Trump’s larger pic-
ture of China is that the Chinese
are fleecing the U.S., they are “our
enemies,” and only by threatening
to disrupt trade with them can the
U.S. earn Beijing’s respect. If the
U.S. wants to reverse China’s pol-
icy on exchange rates, the trade
deficit, and even the South China
Sea, all Washington has to do is
hurt their economy. Trump has no
doubt—he is immune to doubt—
that China will cave under such
pressure.
Donald Trump and his inner
circle have no interest in seeing
the world through the eyes of oth-
ers. The world is reduced to mar-
kets and diplomacy to The Deal.
The other forces that motivate
nations—nationalism, insecuri-
ty, underdevelopment, historical
grievances—don’t seem to be
worth understanding or acknowl-
edging. That’s a major reason
Trump and Manafort are most
comfortable dealing with—and
admiring—dictators.
Dictators
run a tight ship; their word is law;
no one else need be consulted or
persuaded. Cutting a deal with
them is so much easier than con-
tending with democratic leaders,
messy legislative processes and
outside influences such as unions
and NGOs.
Fortunately, such a danger-
ously narrow view of world af-
fairs is not going to win in No-
vember. But it won’t go away, if
for no other reason than that as
U.S. influence in the world de-
clines, as U.S. ability to end ter-
rorism, climate disruptions, and
other large-scale threats become
ever more problematic, and as
social and economic inequali-
ty persists at home, politicians
preaching simplistic solutions
and promising to put “America
first” will reemerge. Trump may
go on vacation after the election,
as he has promised; but Trump-
ism will survive.
Mel Gurtov, syndicated by
PeaceVoice, is professor emeritus
of political science at Portland
State University and blogs at In
the Human Interest.