This is the second of my posts based on a recent tour of the eastern half of the USA. I visited a number of sites relevant to African American history. To mark Black History Month, I am relating some of the things I saw, in the order I saw them.
Back Bay metro station in Boston, Massachusetts, is a very prominent and large underground railway station, serving a particular busy and affluent part of the city.
As I moved through it, I couldn’t help noticing that the passenger transit area is dominated by a very large statue of a man (photo above). There were several panels explaining the statue, with much praise for its subject, A. Philip Randolph.
Detail from the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, Boston
I’ve recently returned from a seven city, 10786 mile-long tour across the eastern United States.
This trek sprang from several random “bucket list” items of mine. I was fortunate enough to be able to stitch together an itinerary which did a lot of ticking of my terminal wish list. The visits were all deeply “anorakky” in nature – mainly to museums.
But as I prepared to travel, I noticed that there was a clear theme running through most of my destinations – that of African American history.
Last night Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for Massachusetts Senate, lost by 5 points a race that just weeks ago everyone was declaring hers by right. And even before the polls closed it seemed like everyone was playing the blame game.
Coakley’s team and the White House pointed the fingers at each other. Some are blaming the economy, the excellence of Republican candidate Scott Brown (our first centrefold Senator, history should note), or Coakleys repeated Red Sox related gaffs. There’s even a “Drunk Electorate” theory. All of these factors surely played some part.
Nominally an extremely safe seat for the Democrats, the Democratic candidate Martha Coakley should be a shoe-in.
And yet Republican former centrefold star Scott Brown, once voted by Cosmo as America’s Sexiest Man (the link is fairly safe for work, but does contain a tastefully cropped naked man) has been closing the gap in the polls, and in some cases even taken a lead.
Of key importance in this battle is the senatorial supermajority, which we have covered on The Voice in the past. In the US senate, a party with 60 of the 100 senators – or the votes of 60 senators – can move a vote of cloture which can end a filibuster. This removes from the minority party a powerful tool to veto legislation by talking it out. This has become all the more fraught recently since Obamacare, the extremely controversial healthcare legislation currently under consideration. If the Republicans win the Massachusetts, the Democrats lose their right of veto and they could lose Obamacare.
Here’s a video for each candidate to give you a flavour of the battle.
First, President Obama is staking his political reputation to support Martha Coakley and underlining the future of Obamacare:
James Bliss8th Apr - 2:04am @David Raw "Well, James, best of luck when you drive in a bus lane during peak hours and decide that the £ 60 fine is...
Michael Sammon8th Apr - 1:57am Good article Tom and like any solid argument, it has been straw manned to death in the comments. I can possibly see a case for...
William Francis8th Apr - 1:51am @Alistair "Rather than simply reducing sugar companies have loaded up their products with sweeteners which are not healthy," And sugar is healthy? I have yet...
Joseph Bourke8th Apr - 1:12am Michael BG, if benefits were a long-term solution to poverty you would think we might have got there 76 years on from the Beveridge report....
William Francis8th Apr - 1:01am @Lee Allane You are conflating silence with lack of media coverage.
Tom Harney8th Apr - 12:53am My opinion is that we need to think about how to remove poverty first. We also need to think about the fact is that the...
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James Bliss 8th Apr - 2:04am
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