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In 1984, Gypsy decided that she wanted to learn something about grass-roots politics. Choosing your campaign for president as a good place to start, she volunteered as a campaign worker. Willy, busy with contract work as a computer consultant, nevertheless served both as advisor and counselor, explaining some of the more arcane details of party politics as they came up.
You didn't get very far that year, but Gypsy was so energized that when 1988 rolled around, and you decided to run once again, Gypsy again signed on...quite early this time...and asked Willy if he would donate his computer expertise to the effort. Willy immediately wrote custom software for the purpose of both enlisting and tracking what he assumed could and would be a large volunteer force. Contacting some of the people with whom she had worked in 1984, Gypsy quickly realized that few people were ready to assume leadership. So she designated herself State Caucus Coordinator...Minnesota has a combination caucus/primary system for selecting candidates...and set out to gather as many helpers as possible.
This turned out to be a very successful campaign. Each time your campaign, led by (now) Senator Paul Wellstone, who was then just a very popular college teacher, held an event, she was able to sign up scores of volunteers. By the time you showed up in person, and toured the state, these numbers turned into hundreds. Soon, we had over 3500 people signed up to work on your campaign. Gypsy regularly turned over our lists to the other leaders in the effort. We had also collected data on what each volunteer was willing to do, so these lists were extremely helpful.
It became apparent that you stood a good chance of winning in Minnesota. Your message of racial harmony combined with your socially liberal stances resonated well with the members of the DFL (Democrat-Farmer-Labor) Party. Soon, the word spread that you had the most effective campaign in Minnesota. The top leadership of the DFL began to caution us that if you did NOT win, that we MUST fall in line behind whomever DID win. They also made it clear that their...and the national leadership's...first choice was Governor Dukakis.
Toward the end of the campaign, you held a labor rally in the Eighth Congressional District...Duluth...at which 5000 enthusiastic union members and other interested persons showed up to cheer you on. As we said earlier, at such rallies, we were usually able to enlist about 5% of the attendees as volunteers. This time, Wellstone, who was accompanying you to Duluth, told us that would take care of passing out volunteer applications. So, Gypsy gave him a large stack of cards...we anticipated at least 250 applicants...and she went on to other work.
When the rally was over and Wellstone returned, NOT A SINGLE VOLUNTEER application had been passed out and we had nearly zero help in that congressional district. Wellstone said that he had "forgotten" to hand them out. At every other rally, Gypsy had made sure that EVERY PERSON who passed through the door had one of these cards in hand.
The rest is history. When the votes were finally counted, you had 33% of the vote and Dukakis had 35%. You won EVERY one of Minnesota's congressional districts...EXCEPT the EIGHTH!
The leadership of the DFL moved quickly thereafter. Sending over "volunteers" to coordinate our national convention delegation, they quickly took control of the apparatus Gypsy had set up and, in an act dripping of vile cynicism, told the other volunteers that Gypsy was not an "official" representative of your campaign, and successfully fought to keep her from going to the national convention, although she had run...and won...delegate status at every other convention held previously.
All through your campaign, Gypsy had noted and fought against the ever-present anti-Black sentiment in the other campaigns. Members were repeatedly told that you were a "one issue" candidate...that issue being affirmative action for Blacks...and that you "could NOT win!" Gypsy knew this to be false from your words and from her own experience. Every socially liberal organization was represented in your campaign...gay rights, Latino rights, migrant workers' rights, abortion rights and EVEN usually conservative right-to-life organizations. Like you, she saw herself as a uniter, not a divider. She constantly worked to unite the various groups, to wean them away from their single issues into a focussed "Jackson for President" organization...to convince the workers you COULD win. So, when the leadership of the DFL organized to flush her from the DFL she understood. She began to say, "scratch a liberal and you find a fascist underneath." While this may have been a bit of hyperbole, her experience in your campaign went a long way in converting her to the libertarian political philosophy. She saw that there was more...much more...than liberal government programs involved in changing society.
When, two years later, Wellstone ran successfully for the Senate as the DFL anointed candidate, it became very clear what had happened to your campaign organization and to Gypsy personally. As liberal as they talked, what was really at stake was power. The DFL and Wellstone...your supposed State Campaign Chairman in Minnesota...made DAMNED sure that YOU didn't get any. Now you have been relegated to the role of slave overseer, to keep Black people in line and following the "correct" political line.
You can imagine our chagrin, when as a final insult during the Gore campaign of the year 2000, you not only personally backed this anointed Grand Duke of the Democrat Peerage, but, along with the NAACP, literally HERDED record numbers of African-American to the polls to vote overwhelmingly for this man, this manufactured political hack. Not only that, but afterwards, as it became clear that Governor Bush had won, you turned your media star privilege into whiney, racist rhetoric aimed to keep African-Americans from cooperating with him. We know you are too intelligent to swallow all the hysterical nonsense...although we understand that many of the complaints about discrimination are justified...that is being put forward by Democrat mouthpieces. Its like the entire Democrat party has become a disinformation machine! Mouthing slogans like "count all the votes"...how many times?...or asking who "really won" just feed into what has become a bitter and stupid propaganda campaign worthy of the Nazi Party or the Soviet Politburo, but certainly beneath your dignity.
Yesterday, in an Open Letter to George W. Bush we urged him to rise COMPLETELY above partisanship and to "think like Mahatma Gandhi." Gandhi, in his political rather than his religious role, always used two tactics. Do the new and unexpected...rather than the tried and failed...and respect, above all else, worthy minorities in the name of what is right for the ENTIRE people. Bush needs that advice, but we shouldn't have to be reminding YOU, an acolyte of Martin Luther King, of these truths.
Instead of marching lock step with the Democrats in their quest to solve all problems with federal legislation, you should be looking for new and innovative NON-GOVERNMENTAL ways to solve the problems of society. Instead of fighting for the status quo in education, why not back school voucher experiments, especially in predominantly minority educationally underserved areas? Are you so closely tied to the Democrat backed teacher's unions that you must fall in step, at all costs, with their agenda of more money for teachers, no change for students? Don't the children of the poor deserve the same opportunities and choices available to the rich and powerful, like your children and those of your friends in the upper levels of the Democrat Party? Couldn't inner city schools benefit from a bit of healthy competition?
At a time when African-Americans are making unprecedented advances in ALL areas of society, moving from excellence on the athletic fields and in entertainment into academia, you seem to have forgotten the words YOU once said, "Most of the poor people of this country are White!"...and that poverty invites discrimination against peoples of ALL hues.
Or, have you, like Wellstone, transformed yourself into that against which you once vigorously fought? Has the Democrat Party promised you some crumbs to justify lying and cheating, spinning divisive racist nonsense instead of unifying gospel?
We leave you with a single thought. When Willy was in prison, he noticed something very interesting. Himself an accomplished chess player who competed in the prison chess club, he saw that, of the top forty chess players at McNeil Island Penitentiary, the maximum security federal facility in which he was incarcerated, all but SIX were Black. Willy was the top White player, ranking THIRTEENTH! So much for the inferior mental ability of African Americans!
Now to Willy and Gypsy, this is just an interesting factoid that we can include in our columns on the Internet. Our audience is limited to those who have stumbled across our writing and find it intriguing. But YOU, as the nominal leader of African-Americans in this great nation, have an enormous bully pulpit. YOU ought to be able to make some real hay out of stories like this. After all, you ARE somebody!
Talk to you later...
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