A Blueprint for the Freedom Party

By Alton H. Maddox, Jr.
While a political party may be established at any time, a political party with ballot status in New York can only occur during a gubernatorial election which, in New York, is every four years. A general election for governor of New York will occur on November 2, 2010. To achieve ballot status, the political party must collect 50,000 votes.
If a political party fails to collect 50,000 votes in a gubernatorial election, it will lose ballot status for the next four years. This means that its statewide candidate for governor must gather 15,000 valid signatures once again. The Working Families Party, for example, lost its ballot status four years ago.
The Freedom Party intends for its petitioning in 2010 to be “one and done”. Once it acquires ballot status, it may nominate its gubernatorial candidate. An example is the nomination of Andrew Cuomo for governor in 2010. By petitioning, however, the person carrying the petition of Charles Barron gets the opportunity to engage the voters during the petition drive.
It is very important to distinguish a designating petition from an independent nominating petition. A designating petition is associated with a primary. On the other hand, an independent nominating petition is associated with a general election.
Any registered voter can vote in a general election and any registered voter can sign any independent designating petition. The names of the statewide slate of the Freedom Party will appear on the ballot in November and not on the ballot in September. The general election happens in November. In New York, only an enrolled member of a political party can vote in its primary.
Before Smith v. Allwright (1944), Blacks were usually barred from voting in primaries. They were referred to as “white primaries”. In this country, there have always been barriers to voting. Universal suffrage is not respected. Thurgood Marshall hailed Smith v. Allwright as his greatest legal victory.
Marshall elevated politics over education. Brown v. Board of Education would be decided in 1954. The sine qua non of politics is the selection and not the election of candidates. The South operated under a one-party system; namely, states’ rights. This was the overt agenda of the Democratic Party before 1968.

Terrorism was the instrument employed before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to enforce “white primaries.” Co-optation is the tool employed today. Leading Blacks are paid-off not to resist white supremacy. This enables white supremacists to hand-pick “our” Black elected officials. Thus, Black voters endorse their own oppression.
Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party was established to abolish slavery. The “founding fathers” of the Democratic Party include Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. They were white supremacists. Jefferson penned “Notes on Virginia”. Jackson nominated Roger Taney to head the U.S. Supreme Court. Taney wrote the Dred Scott decision. White Democrats still honor them.
The disenfranchisement of Black and Latino felons must be a concern of the Freedom Party. Our voting ranks are being depleted. In New York, half of the parolees and probationers are Black and a third are Latino. Only Maine, Vermont, Utah and Massachusetts lack a criminal disenfranchisement statute of “one type or another”.
Felony convictions are wreaking havoc in New York. Although the Rockefeller drug law has been softened, New York still refuses to enact “second chance” legislation for ex-felons. Decent employment opportunities still continue to escape them. The lack of “second chance” legislation boosts recidivism.
The three-fifths provision of the U.S. Constitution still apply to Black felons without equivocation. It was sanctioned by the Thirteenth Amendment. Thus, Black and Latino felons are counted in their places of incarceration and not their actual places of residence. They are incarcerated in areas that are hostile to Blacks and Latinos.
Political leverage will be important for the Freedom Party and it will start on August 11. This should be our initial shock in New York politics. It will start with our submission of at least 100,000 signatures to the Board of Elections. This would be more that six times the statutory minimum of 15,000 valid signatures.
In 1994, the Freedom Party was a novice in politics. Yet, the party was able to collect more than 53,000 signatures without the organization nor personnel that exists today. Today, the Freedom Party should be able to easily double its efforts of 1994 although our access to the Black media is more accessible than it was in 1994.
In 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, could not leave home without the Independence Party. In 2010, Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has said that he is unable to leave home without the Independence Party. When Councilman Barron secures 500,000 votes, no Democrat nor Republican candidate for statewide office will be able to leave home without the Freedom Party.

View From Here: The Freedom Party – Waking Giant

“Say it loud! I’m Black and I’m Proud!” When we entered the Siloam Presbyterian Church, whose 161 year-old history includes the congregation taking up a $25 collection for the visiting John Brown on his way to Harper’s Ferry, the beat of James Brown was reverberating from the large meeting room up the stairs and over the Sanctuary. There we were engulfed by the heat of over 250 pulsating souls charged with the electricity of the moment as an exhorter preacher-woman of activism stood in front and reminded the crowd, many with more gray in their hair than not, that the formation of a Black-led Freedom Party was a cause whose time has come. And being there among the standing-room only coming together of people, who like Fannie Lou Hamer, are “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” was to know that whether it was Montgomery, Alabama before the bus boycott or Selma before the great march, this is what the ground floor of a movement looks like. This is how it begins. Ain’t No Stoppin’ us Now!”
Viola Plummer told the assembly that the Freedom Party is about power and respect in the political process and organizing to achieve it. That was what brought this gathering behind the standard-bearer of the Freedom Party, former Black Panther and current City Councilman Charles Barron.
The petitioning process begins July 6, and this seasoned group is particularly well-suited to that task. The technology of the signature getting has not changed. It remains hand-to-hand-combat. And this first wave of activists bring their old-school patience and people-skills combined with, in some cases, decades of experience in navigating the infamously treacherous New York City petitioning review process. It will be hard work and long hours. In all likelihood, they will get their signatures and they will be good.
Nest will be the education of the masses and with conditions being what they are, the audience will be receptive to the message that a vote for Andrew Cuomo from the Black community is clearly a vote for Massa and there is no freedom in it. It demonstrates nothing except a willingness to be taken for granted. The Democratic Party has already anointed Cuomo governor, so that’s done as far as they’re concerned. The needs of the African-American community are simply of no interest to them. They are strange but not unusual in that way. Even June 29th’s New York Times Echoed Charles Barron’s complaint with the Democratic Party ticket, reporting on the amazing whiteness of Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s administration. “The city’s non-Hispanic white population is now 35%.But Mr. Bloomberg presides over an administration in which more than 70% of the senior jobs are held by whites.” This explains why we see Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor for Operations, at so many events representing the mayor. He’s the designated guy.
This political system makes decisions based on a white supremacist legacy, a sort of “Post-Traumatic White Supremacist Syndrome” where the centuries of indoctrination in the belief of white superiority, is difficult to shake.
An example of the difference this thinking makes in real-world actions was the Division of Economic and Financial Opportunity created by Mayor David Dinkins, which was bringing fairness to New York City contracting and was on the way to creating businesses and jobs in the African-American community but the Giuliani administration killed it. Now Governor David Paterson is having agencies unbundle their contracts to include minority and women suppliers, increasing that purchasing by tens of millions of dollars. To see that those kinds of initiatives are continued in the next administration, African-Americans have to demonstrate they have the power to take away massive numbers of votes and break the back of any candidate that does not get with the program.
This business of being disorganized while everywhere we look, other groups come together and march sharply up to the front of the line, has to come to an end.
The consciousness-raising, the fund-raising and the vote getting will need to harness the mass communication ability of the Web-savvy, PDA-equipped generation. All of the eighteen-year-olds who are ready to vote speak to each other by text and keep up with current events through their mobile devices. With their ability to communicate so quickly they are a sudden army, waiting to be roused. Waiting to plead their own cause as young African-American people.
What is needed is a coming together around the recognition of the unique history of African-Americans and a willingness to demand that history be addressed in policy changes. When the Freedom Party garners several hundred thousand votes, then we’ll see something new start to happen.