It’s Time to Start Talking About the Brown Mis-Leadership Class

Quetzal Cáceres

05 Sep 2018

It’s bad enough that brown Democratic Party operatives get credit for progressivism they haven’t earned, but why does the DSA play that game?

“Like the Black mis-leadership class, its brown counterpart tries to run its game on legacy.”

I know this is going to set off a tank load of liberals— and those other liberals who think they’re Leftists— but this taboo discussion is long overdue.

But first things first. Black Agenda Report got me hip to Obama’s game when he first ran for president, saving me from later having to admit that I was duped by Hope. I was able to keep my perfect record and didn’t vote for the Terror Tuesday Droner-in-Chief; I voted for Nader, then Stein. So this one is for you BAR, as much as it’s for my Brown siblings who need to pull their heads out of their… the ground.

Earlier this year, Democratic Party stalwart Dolores Huerta was at UCLA delivering a speech and receiving yet another award for obfuscating the roots of oppression and empire. Among her many accolades, Huerta had previously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the prince of peace himself, nobel laureate Barack Obama. Many years ago, Huerta made her Faustian bargain with the Democratic Party, faithfully serving the ruling-class-lite war faction ever since, so the White House award for services rendered (and services to be rendered) was only fitting.

“Might Dolores Huerta’s Democratic Party have something to do with keeping universal health care off the table all these decades?”

At the UCLA event, Huerta wondered aloud how something like universal health care or free university education could be perceived as radical. This is an interesting question. Might Huerta’s Democratic Party have something to do with keeping universal health care off the table all these decades? Or with keeping alive the notion that a free public university education is just plain crazy? Huerta thinks we’re too stupid to put two and two together. Unfortunately, for the most part she’s right.

Bernie Sanders was a sheepdog, but he was a sheepdog advocating for, yes, free public university education and universal health care, and some other good stuff too. And yet during the 2016 primary, Huerta was Hillary’s surrogate. Huerta went full throttle endorsing the tried and true war-criminal candidate, one of the most despicable politicians of the modern age, hated so much by so many that in the end she couldn’t even defeat a degenerate reality-show personality. One would think that such opportunism would forever discredit Huerta among progressives. But in the anemic brain of the liberal/faux Left, such things don’t even seem to register much less cause distress or consternation. In fact, if anything, there seems to be a Huerta revival, with Huerta given special status as a symbol of the “resistance” against Trump—who she helped to elect by supporting Hillary in the primary. Smoke and mirrors.

“Clinton was hated so much by so many that in the end she couldn’t even defeat a degenerate reality-show personality.”

Like iconic members of the Black mis-leadership class, Huerta’s iconic status in the Brown mis-leadership class (and among the petrified liberal/faux Left) allows her to do the devil’s bidding one moment and go to church the next.!Si se puede! It’s like a sloppy magician who’s seen better days, who doesn’t even bother concealing her tricks of the trade because the act itself has become such political kitsch, and people are going to applaud anyway.

It’s mind boggling, or maybe it isn’t. As recently as this summer, Huerta’s image was featured on the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) national website. Apparently DSA thinks members who are national figures are just fine supporting an austerity, pro-war candidate instead of the candidate who actually claims to be a socialist. DSA should have taken her off their website immediately, revoked her membership, maybe written this essay instead of me. But as we are already starting to see, there doesn’t seem to be much accountability expected of DSA candidates, much less members. I guess that might be “mean” or involve “shaming.” That might be too— undemocratic.

“Cornel West publicly called out Obama’s duplicity, including when it came to U.S. imperialist terror abroad.”

Cornel West, on the other hand, is a DSA member with integrity (and also until recently featured on DSA’s website). He had the courage to face the fact that Obama, who West had initially supported, was not a people’s president. Like BAR, West publicly called out Obama’s duplicity, including when it came to U.S. imperialist terror abroad. The lives of babies in Libya, Yemen, or Honduras are just as precious as the lives of babies in the U.S. That’s the difference between speaking truth to power versus speaking truth when it’s expedient.

Huerta prefers to say little when a Democratic Party president is behind the deporting, bombing, austerity, invading, imprisoning, surveillance, and regime change—behind the killing and oppressing. If Obama and the Clintons, like Bush and Bush, were African warlords instead of representatives of U.S. capital, they would likely be in the docket at the Hague, charged with crimes against humanity.

The Brown mis-leadership class enables untold death and suffering, and like the Black mis-leadership class, tries to run its game on legacy. And if liberals and faux Leftists love anything, it’s legacy, especially legacy of color. But what is the value of legacy when the price of empire is blood?

Quetzal Cáceres is a Xicanx educator and socialist living in Yanga (Los Angeles), land of the indigenous Tongva people.

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Brown Misleadership Class

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