RSN: Norman Solomon | Biden's Eloquence About George Floyd Will Ring Hollow if Rahm Emanuel Gets Ambassador Nomination

 

 

26 May 21

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RSN: Norman Solomon | Biden's Eloquence About George Floyd Will Ring Hollow if Rahm Emanuel Gets Ambassador Nomination

Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "If Joe Biden fully meant what he said after meeting with George Floyd's family in the Oval Office on Tuesday, he won't nominate Rahm Emanuel to be the U.S. ambassador to Japan. But recent news reports tell us that's exactly what the president intends to do."

After the meeting, Biden declared that the murder of Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer “launched a summer of protest we hadn’t seen since the Civil Rights era in the ’60s — protests that peacefully unified people of every race and generation to collectively say enough of the senseless killings.” The words were valuable, and so was the symbolism of the president hosting loved ones of Floyd on the first anniversary of his death.

But the value of the White House event will be weakened if Biden names Emanuel to one of this country’s top diplomatic posts — despite his well-earned notoriety for the cover-up of a video showing the police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

When McDonald was shot dead by Chicago police one night in October 2014, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was facing a tough re-election fight. Fortunately, a dash camera on a police car captured the murder on video. Unfortunately, Emanuel’s administration suppressed the video for 13 months, until after Emanuel won re-election.

Imagine if — when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed Floyd by kneeling on him for 9 minutes and 29 seconds — there had been no civilian with a cell phone able to record the murder, and the only visual record of what happened was a police video. And imagine if the city of Minneapolis had suppressed that video for 13 months, until a judge’s order finally forced its release.

That would be Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago.

When reports surfaced last November that Biden was considering Emanuel for a cabinet position, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) pointed out: “Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership.” Then-Congressman-elect Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) tweeted: “That he’s being considered for a cabinet position is completely outrageous and, honestly, very hurtful.”

Two weeks ago, responding to news that Biden had decided to nominate Emanuel as ambassador to Japan, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) sent out a cogent tweet: “Black Lives Matter can’t just be a slogan. It has to be reflected in our actions as a government, and as a people. Rewarding Rahm Emanuel’s cover up of Laquan McDonald’s murder with an ambassadorship is not an act that reflects a value of or respect for Black lives.”

The post of ambassador to Japan would put Emanuel in the thick of economic and military policies. Japan has the world’s third-largest economy. The U.S. currently has two dozen military bases in Japan. A recklessly confrontational military approach in East Asia would get a boost if the next U.S. ambassador to Japan is Emanuel, a longtime hawk who supported the Iraq war even after many Democratic leaders turned against it.

For decades, Emanuel’s career has been the opposite of diplomatic as he bombastically denounced progressives and served corporate interests while enriching himself. And his record of running interference for racist police violence while mayor of Chicago underscores what a terrible mistake it would be for the Senate to confirm him as ambassador.

Impunity for American men in uniform who commit violent crimes is a deeply emotional subject in Japan. Outrage has long festered especially on Okinawa, where women and children have been subjected to sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel stationed at bases there.

Blocking the nomination of Rahm Emanuel to be the USA’s top envoy to Japan won’t bring back Laquan McDonald or any of the other African Americans murdered by police. But it would send a strong signal to mayors and other public officials that covering up brutal police violence is bad for career advancement.

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Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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RSN: Roots Action | National Coalition Vows to Fight Senate Confirmation of Rahm Emanuel to Become Ambassador to Japan

 

 

15 May 21

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RSN: Roots Action | National Coalition Vows to Fight Senate Confirmation of Rahm Emanuel to Become Ambassador to Japan

Roots Action, Reader Supported News
Excerpt: "Twenty organizations announced Friday that they will launch a nationwide grassroots campaign urging senators to vote against President Biden’s expected nomination of Rahm Emanuel to be the U.S."

wenty organizations announced Friday that they will launch a nationwide grassroots campaign urging senators to vote against President Biden’s expected nomination of Rahm Emanuel to be the U.S. ambassador to Japan. The announcement followed reports earlier this week that Biden has decided to nominate Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who has been denounced by activists challenging police brutality.

“Emanuel's abysmal record as mayor of Chicago disqualifies him to represent the United States in a foreign capital,” a joint statement said today. “Our organizations will make sure that every senator hears, loud and clear, from constituents who will insist that this unwise nomination be rejected.”

National organizations signing the statement include Demand Progress, Justice Democrats, People’s Action, RootsAction.org, and Progressive Democrats of America. Chicago-based groups that signed the statement include The People’s Lobby and American Friends Service Committee, Chicago Office.

“We are appalled at the reported plans to nominate Rahm Emanuel as ambassador to Japan,” the statement said. “If the news reports are accurate, President Biden is on the verge of making a serious error.”

Noting that “back in March, we publicly warned against such a nomination of Emanuel,” the organizations said: “The deep concerns that we expressed at that time will now be greatly amplified. Top diplomatic posts should only go to individuals with ethics, integrity and diplomatic skills. Emanuel possesses none of those qualifications.”

The groups emphasized that “Emanuel’s disgraceful behavior as mayor of Chicago cannot be erased or ignored. At a time when the Democratic Party leadership has joined with most Americans in asserting that Black lives matter, it would be a travesty to elevate to an ambassadorship someone who has epitomized the attitude that Black lives do not matter.”

The statement added: “After being elected mayor of Chicago in 2011, Emanuel presided over a scandal-plagued administration that included the closing of 49 public schools, many in Black neighborhoods. As he faced a re-election campaign, for 13 months Emanuel’s administration suppressed a horrific dashcam video showing the death of Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager who had been shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer as he walked away from the officer…. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: ‘Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership.’”

The organizations cited a blunt comment from national NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who said: “As the former mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has shown us that he is not a principled leader or person. His time in public service proved to be burdened with preventable scandal and abandonment of Chicago’s most vulnerable community.”

The national director of RootsAction.org, Norman Solomon, said Friday: “It’s stunning that just weeks after Biden made eloquent pleas for an end to police violence against African Americans, the president has reportedly decided to nominate Rahm Emanuel to an important diplomatic post. In view of his record as Chicago’s mayor, the nomination of Emanuel would undermine those pleas, sending exactly the wrong message about political opportunism and institutional racism.”

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Below is the full text of the joint statement and a list of the signing organizations.

Statement from Coalition of Organizations Regarding President Biden's Reported Plans to Nominate Rahm Emanuel as Ambassador to Japan

We are appalled at the reported plans to nominate Rahm Emanuel as ambassador to Japan. If the news reports are accurate, President Biden is on the verge of making a serious error. Emanuel's abysmal record as mayor of Chicago disqualifies him to represent the United States in a foreign capital. Our organizations will make sure that every senator hears, loud and clear, from constituents who will insist that this unwise nomination be rejected.

Back in March, we publicly warned against such a nomination of Emanuel. The deep concerns that we expressed at that time will now be greatly amplified:

Top diplomatic posts should only go to individuals with ethics, integrity and diplomatic skills. Emanuel possesses none of those qualifications…. Whether in federal or municipal office, he has been known for his abrasive, arrogant style of wielding power.

Emanuel’s disgraceful behavior as mayor of Chicago cannot be erased or ignored. At a time when the Democratic Party leadership has joined with most Americans in asserting that Black lives matter, it would be a travesty to elevate to an ambassadorship someone who has epitomized the attitude that Black lives do not matter. After being elected mayor of Chicago in 2011, Emanuel presided over a scandal-plagued administration that included the closing of 49 public schools, many in Black neighborhoods. As he faced a re-election campaign, for 13 months Emanuel’s administration suppressed a horrific dashcam video showing the death of Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager who had been shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer as he walked away from the officer…. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership.”

National NAACP President Derrick Johnson said: “As the former mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has shown us that he is not a principled leader or person. His time in public service proved to be burdened with preventable scandal and abandonment of Chicago’s most vulnerable community.”

Signing organizations
American Friends Service Committee, Chicago Office
Arab American Action Network
Blue America
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
Chicago Area Peace Action
Chicago Committee Against War and Racism
Demand Progress
Just Foreign Policy
Justice Democrats
Muslim Delegates and Allies Coalition
Other98
Peace Action
People's Action
Progressive Democrats of America
RootsAction.org
The People's Lobby
United for Peace and Justice
U.S. Palestinian Community Network
World Beyond War

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RSN: Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon | Rahm Emanuel Is in the Running for a Top Ambassador Post. The Prospect Is Appalling.

 

 

11 March 21

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RSN: Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon | Rahm Emanuel Is in the Running for a Top Ambassador Post. The Prospect Is Appalling.

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News

ahm Emanuel has never been associated with the word “diplomatic,” but news reports say that President Biden is seriously considering him for a top position as U.S. ambassador to Japan or China. Naming Emanuel to such a post would be an affront to many of the constituencies that got Biden elected. The saga of Emanuel’s three decades in politics is an epic tale of methodical contempt for progressive values.

One thing Emanuel can’t be accused of is inconsistency. During his political career, he has steadily served elite corporate interests, and rarely the interests of the broad public or the causes of racial justice or peace.

Emanuel rose to prominence as the finance director for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. He excelled at pulling in large checks from super-wealthy individuals. As a high-level Clinton administration aide, he played a major role – and bragged about it – in the passage of the disastrous NAFTA trade bill, which was strongly opposed by unions, environmentalists and most Democrats in Congress. He also was a spark plug for passage of the mass-incarceration-oriented 1994 Crime Bill, with prison-term-lengthening provisions like “three strikes.”

In 1996, Emanuel boasted to a Washington Post reporter of the administration’s “tough” policies on “wedge issues – crime, welfare, and recently immigration.” In a memo that year, he urged Clinton to move rightward on immigration policy by working to “claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.” The next year, Emanuel’s approach was explained by a senior staffer at the Immigration and Naturalization Service who worked closely with him: “As long as we dealt with illegal immigration, we could be to the right of Atilla the Hun. Rahm felt that Americans believed too many people were coming into this country, too many foreigners, so he wanted to show the administration returning people, deporting them, putting up bigger fences, sending them back.”

In July 1996, the Republican-controlled Congress pushed through its punitive "welfare reform" bill that ended the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, added work requirements and gave states the power to slash support. In the intense White House debate over whether to sign the bill, Emanuel was one of the strongest voices urging Bill Clinton not to veto the bill, as the president had done with earlier GOP welfare bills. Clinton signed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996,” prompting an outcry from anti-poverty activists and high-level administration resignations.

After leaving the Clinton administration in 1998, Emanuel made a quick $18 million in two and a half years as managing director of the Wall Street investment bank Wasserstein Perella, working out of its Chicago office.

Elected to Congress in November 2002, Emanuel supported George W. Bush’s disastrous Iraq invasion, and defended the war after most Democrats in Congress and most of the public had turned against it. As head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, Emanuel seemed oblivious to the change in public opinion. While he took credit for Democrats regaining the House majority, his selection of right-leaning candidates, including Iraq war supporters like himself and former Republicans, ultimately led to GOP gains.

While serving as President Obama’s chief of staff in 2009 and 2010, Emanuel argued for mollifying healthcare reform opponents by significantly weakening Obamacare. (He acknowledged years later it was a good thing Obama didn’t listen to him.) In a 2010 meeting with liberal leaders who planned to publicly pressure the Democratic Party’s conservative wing into supporting healthcare reform, Emanuel famously called them “fucking retarded.”

Emanuel was known in D.C. for hyper-combativeness (earning him the nickname “Rahmbo”) and his ability to gain positive spin from corporate media: “He is on a first-name basis with every political reporter in Washington,” a Washington Post columnist asserted.

After being elected mayor of Chicago in 2011, Emanuel’s administration faced a series of scandals that included concerted warfare against the teachers’ union and the closing of 49 public schools, many in black neighborhoods.

In his 2015 bid for re-election, he was forced into a runoff by progressive challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a contest that would be decided largely by African American voters. Emanuel very likely would have lost the election except for the fact that for 13 months, through the duration of the campaign, his administration suppressed a horrific dashcam video showing the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, an African American who’d been shot 16 times by a police officer as he walked away from the officer. (The city had paid $5 million to McDonald’s family without a lawsuit having been filed.)

Soon after a judge ordered the city of Chicago to release the video, polls found that only 17 percent of Chicagoans believed Emanuel when he said he’d never seen the video and that most city residents wanted him to resign as mayor.

When it was reported last November that Biden was considering him for a cabinet post, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership.” Then-Congressman-elect Mondaire Jones added: “That he's being considered for a cabinet position is completely outrageous and, honestly, very hurtful.”

Emanuel’s 30-year campaign against pro-working-class policy reforms is unending. Asked last August how he would advise the Biden administration, he told CNBC: “Two things I would say if I was advising an administration. One is there’s no new Green Deal, there’s no Medicare for All.”

If Rahm Emanuel becomes the ambassador to China or Japan – countries with the world’s second- and third-largest economies – he will gain new leverage in a region bristling with ethnic and military tensions. Everything about his record indicates that such power would be vested in the wrong hands.

Days after Biden’s election, AOC told The New York Times that Emanuel’s inclusion in the Biden administration “would signal, I think, a hostile approach to the grassroots and the progressive wing of the party.”

We’ll soon find out whether Biden is willing to send such a signal.

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Jeff Cohen is an activist, author and co-founder of RootsAction.org. He was an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and founder of the media watch group FAIR. In 2002-2003, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC. He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions. Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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