Dis in the D

[adriennel]

An interesting editorial in our weekly rag about last week's "no-show" event in Detroit and the Democratic African American vote.

"Dis in the D: Sharpton fills the void left by Kerry, Dean, Clark"

There are two ways to interpret the three empty chairs that occupied the stage of the Paul Robeson Theatre at Detroit’s Northwest Activity Center last week. One view is benign, the other malignant.

As is often the case in politics, the truth probably contains a mixture of both.

The town hall meeting in residential Detroit featuring Democratic presidential hopefuls days before the state’s caucus had all the earmarks of a premier event. An overflow crowd turned out, filling the 250-seat theater and spilling over into an adjacent room to watch on a big screen. CNN was there to televise the event. According to organizers, front-runner Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and two of his leading rivals, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Gen. Wesley Clark, had committed to attend. And then there was the Rev. Al Sharpton, a man with absolutely no chance of winning his party’s nomination, but one who vows to fight on in the hope he will garner enough support to force the Democratic Party to make an “urban” agenda — that is, an agenda that takes seriously the concerns of blacks and other minorities — a key part of its platform at this summer’s nominating convention in Boston.


http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=5932