There is always more than one side to a story. In politics, the sides can be as many as the number of people involved. The recent debacle over President Trump, Trump, or Number 45, and his attempts to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus piqued my interest.
Trump professed to want to meet with the CBC during his recent press conference. The CBC in turn tweeted that they sent him a letter on Jan. 19 about them meeting with him. I was curious to see what the letter said, so I downloaded the linked copy.
The first thing I noticed was that the letter was sent to President-elect Donald J. Trump the day before his inauguration. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it was a backhanded slight. They could have waited a mere 24 hours to send off the letter so that it could then be addressed to the POTUS and mailed to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Then again, many of the members of the CBC had already publically professed how they weren’t going to attend the inauguration. (Side note: Our Democratic Senator Dick Durbin went to the inauguration and spoke with Trump regarding the DACA program that benefits illegal aliens who were brought here as children and Trump softened his tune on them.)
The CBC has been in place since 1971. With the “black” as its centerpiece, one would think that those members are very concerned about the plight of the descendants of enslaved Africans. As I read the letter, the following struck me like a bolt of lightning:
“For more than 45 years, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has worked to improve conditions for African Americans from all walks of life. Collectively, our members represent 78 million Americans, 17 million of whom are African-American.”
Wait a second! They profess to be working to improve the conditions for African-Americans but at the same time, if 61 million of the people they represent aren’t African American, who do they truly serve? Is that the reason why our plight changes so little?
A further reading of the letter shows that it offered rebuttals to Trump’s “New Deal for Black America” point-by-point. The CBC and Trump have agreed to meet and we need to monitor the outcome. We are truly in a time where we need to know what both the left and the right hands are doing.
Update: Last week I wrote about Chad Robertson, the young man travelling home to Minnesota who was allegedly shot in the back by an Amtrak police officer. Chad was paralyzed from the neck down and upon learning of his fate, told his family, “The police ruined my life.” Chad died on Wednesday, Feb. 15. His death has been ruled a homicide. The officer, LaRoyce Tankson, has been charged with first-degree murder.
Lastly, the Valentine’s Day murder of Lazarec Collins, 26, and Lavontay White, Jr., 2, is another sickening tragedy that adds to the number of dead young people in this city. Even worse is the absolute silence from our elected officials. They can easily vote to charge us 7 cents a shopping bag on top of the over 10 pwercent sales tax. Yet where is their voice when young people are dying day-in-and-day-out?
Even worse are the activists who morph into being as soon as the cameras are turned on. The only cameras that should matter to any of us are the ones that can capture/identify our criminal element so that they can be caught and severely prosecuted.
To all of Chicago: Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired?
