Wright in Detroit – ‘War on the Poor’ (The Michigan View 11.06.11)

Posted by hpayne on November 6, 2011

Grand Circus Park, Detroit –“There is a War on the Poor,” roared Jeremiah “Goddamn America” Wright in downtown Detroit Sunday as he echoed the class warfare rhetoric of his former parishioner, Barack Obama. “(Is) the tea party any different than a lynch party?” Wright added.

How times have changed.

Coordinated with the nearby Occupy Detroit movement, Wright’s appearance was a dramatic illustration of how Democratic Party rhetoric has come full circle to parrot the extreme pastor that Obama distanced himself from in 2008. “Consider the GOP – the Grand Obstructionist Party – trying to put one black man out of his job,” said Wright in one of a pair of speeches at Central United Methodist Church (an ally of the Occupy Detroit movement ) that demonized rich corporations that he and Obama believe are at the center of America’s doldrums.

Wright’s speech was part of a chaotic day in Motown that brought together Obama’s 2012 base at Detroit’s “Obamaville.” Elected as the Great Uniter with a broad coalition of voters in 2008, the downtown scene was an illustration of how – after three years of Obamanomics – the president has become the Great Divider, leader of a narrow coalition of the angry.

A powerful orator, Wright’s sermons before the leftist Methodist congregation bore all his trademarks – delicious religious metaphor salted with anti-Israel rhetoric and gutter politics. But while the soaring recitation of biblical passages brought nods, his audience delighted in the red meat.

He blamed Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and the Koch Brothers and “conservative think tanks fueled by corporations” for a War on Poverty “that has waned.” He saw a pharmaceutical industry conspiracy to deny blacks AIDS remedies while making “money off people like Magic Johnson.” And he bemoaned a “new Jim Crow Era of mass incarceration” behind a veil of “law and order” whereby “white folk were the law, rich folks were the law. . . and black folks were out of order, the poor were out of order.”

Like Obama, Wright’s world is a sea of victims at the mercy of the faceless rich.

Bookended by Wright’s sermons was an afternoon Big Labor march down Woodward Avenue – Detroit’s main street – to hook up with the Occupy Detroit camp.

There the UAW launched a sympathy rally for Occupy Detroit. In fact, the rally was simply an affirmation that Occupy Detroit has been a Big Labor front all along as the rally assembled many of the same faces and signboards that had kicked off Occupy Detroit two weeks ago.

The UAW rally brought out Democratic Congressman Gary Peters – a self-proclaimed moderate and major campaign beneficiary of big banks and utilities – whose presence indicated the hold the Far Left has on Democrats. There were no moderates Sunday as speakers railed against corporations and demanded bigger government.

“The middle class has gotten the short end of the stick,” said Peters. But there was little middle class in evidence amongst a crowd of anti-capitalist activists, public employee union members, and left-wing students.

“What did you do in the Class War, Daddy?” demanded one of the Occupy posters. From Obama to Jeremiah Wright to Big Labor, this is the battle cry of a radicalized Democratic Party.

 

 

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