Blacks for Bush

Our job is both to defeat Bush and to prevent Kerry from taking us where he wants to go – back to the Clinton era. There must be an opposition in place in January of next year, and no honeymoon. We must anticipate the political lay of the land under a Kerry administration, and quickly move towards a strategy for dismantling as much as possible of both the George Bush and Bill Clinton legacies.

A Kerry presidency poses particular challenges to the integrity and cohesion of Black politics. At a hastily arranged talk to Howard University students Kerry dismissed reparations for slavery (“I personally do not believe that America is going to advance if we go backwards and look to reparations in the way that some people are defining them…") and shamelessly abandoned his initial opposition to the coup against the democratically elected President of Haiti. "I think Aristide went astray. He was no picnic, but what we should have done was held him accountable. ... I will fight for democracy, but not a particular leader," Kerry said, unaware of the glaring contradiction.