By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Rosa Clemente is not one for half measures.
In her fight for social justice she’ll challenge even those who are her allies.
The African American activist who had to speak out to have others recognize that she, a Puerto Rican, was black as well as Latina, delivered the keynote address at Saturday’s Black Issues Conference at Bowling Green State University.
In a sprawling speech that was part indictment, incitement and autobiography, Clemente said that eight years after the election of an African American president, nothing has improved.
The country is poised to have Donald Trump, “a xenophobic, racist, misogynistic” candidate, win the Republican nomination for president. Yet “he’s treated like a joke,” she said. For her he is a serious threat.
But she has little love for either major political party.
Mass incarceration started under Ronald Reagan, Clemente said, and was perfected by the Democrats who wanted to show they were moderates.
Hillary Clinton was “right there with her husband” supporting the juvenile justice bill that led to an increase in the incarceration of African Americans. “She called us ‘super predators.'”
Clinton’s rival for the presidential nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is “better,” but still he voted for that crime bill.
Clemente lives with the effects of those policies. Her husband was imprisoned at 19. He grew up in a household with abuse and drugs. He ended up selling drugs at 12. When he was released he was put on parole for the rest of his life – that is, until he and his wife sued. Even now, the only job he can get bussing tables at Pizzeria Uno. The burden of mass incarceration is generational, Clemente said. Her father-in-law served time, her husband’s son just got out of jail, and his brother is facing a life sentence.
And more and more of those incarcerated are black and Latina women. She advised the luncheon crowd that if they are involved in a discussion about police brutality and incarceration and it only involves men talking about men, to leave.
She noted that her husband’s co-workers at the restaurant include college graduates.
That’s a sign that capitalism is failing. Under President Obama “nothing material has improved.”
“The one percent has gotten smaller: 400 families own 84 percent of the wealth in this country,” she said. One in six African Americans are poor, one in five are on Food Stamps and 65 percent of African American and Latino children live in poverty.
College debt is soaring. As urban neighborhoods gentrify, rents can more than double, even in apartments where there is occasionally no heat.
Through Operation Streamline, more immigrants who enter the United States illegally are being funneled into the criminal justice system. While fewer prisons are being built, the number of immigration detention centers, most operated by private companies, has increased dramatically, she said.
In Flint, Michigan, some people are too afraid of raids by immigration service officers to open their doors to those distributing clean water. Instead, Clemente said, they continue to drink poisonous water.
The problem of poisonous water is not restricted to Flint. She noted that in the village of Hoosick Falls in upstate New York half the population, which is 99 percent white, is believed to have cancer because of industrial waste in the water.
The Black Lives Matter movement has ratcheted up the pressure for change. The turmoil in Ferguson was a turning point, Clemente said. When mainstream leaders such as Jesse Jackson showed up they were told to leave.
The movement was led by women, many of them lesbians, many of them homeless. “They queered the movement,” she said.
They asserted they would no longer stand for homophobia within the ranks of the movement.
That activism is crucial given the continued violence against black transsexuals and rampant homelessness among young black gays.
Clemente also warned of a Supreme Court that appears ready to end legal abortion.
The fight for the right to have an abortion is not “a feminist struggle,” she said, “but a human rights struggle. It is my God-given right.” Poor women suffer most when they lose the right to choose.
This is not the time, Clemente said, for reformist actions.
Body cameras are not the solution. Gay marriage is not the solution. Half-hearted immigration reform is not the solution. Electing a Democrat is not a solution.
Clemente, who ran as the Green Party vice presidential candidate in 2008, said she will always support that party. She refuses to support either of the “corporate” major parties.
She urged the students in attendance to get involved, in Black Lives Matter if they identify as African American, or another movement.
“We don’t have any more time for games. … I truly believe when black people are free, we all are free.”
