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congressional black caucus
Why the Congressional Black Caucus Should Boycott Netanyahu’s Speech
Black members of Congress skipped Netanyahu’s 2015 address in defense of Obama; will they do the same in defense of Palestinians?
Jul 24, 2024
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress in 2015, the Congressional Black Caucus skipped the speech. Netanyahu had arrived—with the Republicans’ blessing—to rebuke then-President Barack Obama for pursuing an agreement with Iran over the country’s nuclear program. In defense of Obama, the CBC refused to attend the speech.
But will Black members of Congress do the same in defense of Palestinians?
Israel is in its ninth month of a scorched earth assault on Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli forces have killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and wounded hundreds of thousands—many of whom are permanently maimed. They are systematically targeting medical facilities for destruction, along with mosques, churches, and schools, and they have destroyed every single university campus in Gaza.
It is important that several CBC members were among the progressives who voted against sending more funding to Israel. But there’s much more to be done.
Palestinians rightly call this genocide. Scholars of the subject and the International Court of Justice agree, and are calling on Israel to stop. The U.S. government, on the other hand, has been encouraging Israel’s destruction—supplying the weapons to do it, and vetoing resolution after resolution in the United Nations Security Council calling for a cease-fire.
It is in this isolation on the world stage that Congress has invited Netanyahu to address a joint session—a rare privilege that Congress has extended to Netanyahu more than any other head of state in history.
Make no mistake: This invitation affirms Israel’s genocide. And with the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court calling for Netanyahu’s arrest for crimes against humanity, Congress’ invitation is an affront to international law.
But Black members of Congress can dissent. Not only has the CBC boycotted Netanyahu before, but earlier in its history, it stood on the right side of history by standing against South Africa’s racist apartheid regime. The CBC led the passage of sanctions against apartheid South Africa in 1986.
Israel had a history of deep collaboration with South Africa’s apartheid regime—and Palestinians charge Israel with being an apartheid state today. Palestinian human rights groups like Al Haq, international organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and Israeli groups like B’Tselem have all carried out their own investigations and concluded that Israel is committing the international crime of apartheid.
Black folks in the United States have our own history of appealing to the international community in the face of suffering. In 1951, Black activists presented a case to the U.N. titled “We Charge Genocide,” which called attention to genocidal practices carried out and enabled by the U.S. government against the Black population.
If apartheid is wrong in South Africa, and genocide is wrong when it’s carried out against Black people, then those forms of violence are also wrong when directed at Palestinians.
The history of solidarity between the Black and Palestinian freedom struggles is long and deep. Palestinians spoke up in support of Black Lives Matter activists in Ferguson when that city rose up after the police murder of Mike Brown. The Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) called attention to Israeli violence in the 1960s, and Rev. Jesse Jackson included support for Palestinian rights in his presidential run in 1988.
Given the enormous complicity of Congress in Israel’s genocide—most recently voting to send Israel $26 billion in emergency aid when it’s abundantly clear that Israel is using that support to kill Gaza’s children and destroy its cities—boycotting Netanyahu’s speech is the absolute minimum that Black members should be doing.
They should also be working to stop the genocide. It is important that several CBC members were among the progressives who voted against sending more funding to Israel. But there’s much more to be done.
The next step though is clear and easy. Netanyahu—presiding over the destruction of Gaza, notoriously racist against both Palestinians and Africans, and a figure so polarizing that even prominent Israelis are calling for Congress to disinvite him—should not be welcome in the Capitol.
The Congressional Black Caucus was once called “the conscience of the Congress.” The most minimal—but no less important—way to honor that legacy, and more importantly to affirm the humanity of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, is to boycott Netanyahu’s speech.
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Dems Slam GOP for Trying to Force 'Anti-Immigrant Agenda' Into Government Funding Bill
"House Republicans cannot move their extreme, cruel, unworkable anti-immigrant agenda through the regular legislative process, so they're trying to make an end-run around Congress and hold the American people hostage to force it into law."
Sep 29, 2023
The Democratic chairs of leading congressional caucuses said late Thursday that they oppose any last-minute effort to cram immigration policy changes into government funding legislation as House and Senate Republicans consider doing just that, with a shutdown less than 48 hours away.
"It is not appropriate to establish new immigration and border policy in a bill to keep the government funded," the chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and Congressional Black Caucus said in a joint statement.
"House Republicans cannot move their extreme, cruel, unworkable anti-immigrant agenda through the regular legislative process, so they're trying to make an end-run around Congress and hold the American people hostage to force it into law," they continued. "Even Minority Leader Senator McConnell has said, 'Shutting down the government isn't an effective way to make a point.' We couldn't agree more."
The Democrats' statement came in the wake of news that members of the House and Senate—with the reported backing of some Democrats in the upper chamber—are discussing the possible addition of immigration and border measures to a short-term government funding bill in a bid to win the votes of intransigent House Republicans.
Earlier this week, as the chaos-ridden House failed to make progress, the Senate advanced a legislative vehicle for a continuing resolution that would keep the government through November 17—an attempt to buy time for both chambers to approve full-year funding measures.
Citing two unnamed Republican aides, The Washington Postreported that "by Thursday evening, Senate Republicans were considering an amendment to the continuing resolution that would include $6 billion in funding for border security but no new immigration policy."
According to the Post, Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) "appeared to be involved in the talks."
On Friday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)—who is facing a potential removal plot by far-right House Republicans—is expected to put on the floor a Republican stopgap funding measure that includes major federal spending cuts and border policies.
The Wall Street Journalreported late Thursday that the GOP package includes changes that "House lawmakers passed earlier this year in a broader bill that orders construction to resume on the Trump administration's border wall." That bill was dead on arrival in the Senate.
"The border measures, which have broad backing in the conference, would also make it harder for people to remain in the U.S. under the protection of asylum rules," the Journal noted.
House Republicans' latest effort to move ahead with a short-term funding package will come after they passed several appropriations bills Thursday night, including measures to fund the Pentagon and State Department.
But the House voted down the GOP-authored agriculture appropriations bill, which included steep cuts to food aid for low-income families and a rollback of abortion pill access.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that lawmakers "should have spent this week working together to prevent the government from shutting down."
"Instead, we spent it watching House Republicans in chaos, loading up their 2024 funding bills with deeper cuts and dangerous policies that harm the economy and raise the cost of living for American families," said DeLauro. "Another day of Republican dysfunction, two days until they shut the government down."
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House Dems Slam 'Racist Tropes' in New Florida K-12 History Curriculum
Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost led the letter against "bigoted teaching standards in Florida that want kids to learn that Black people received 'benefits' from being enslaved."
Jul 22, 2023
Four Black Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday joined the growing chorus of critics opposing "racist tropes" in Florida's new K-12 history curriculum, which includes teaching middle school students "the resurrection of one of the greatest lies America has ever told itself, that slavery benefited the enslaved."
"Your decision to rewrite history to ingrain white supremacy into the minds of children is a colossal step backward and an insult to Black people, descendants of slaves, and the intellect of the American people," three Florida Democrats—Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, and Frederica Wilson—and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) wrote to the state's Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. and Board of Education Chairman Ben Gibson.
The first-of-its-kind standards approved Wednesday by the Florida board "are not the truth of American history but riddled with falsehoods that minimize the unique racial terror experienced by Black people in America throughout time," the lawmakers argued.
"These standards are out of touch with reality and will leave future generations of Floridians out of touch and disadvantaged in the world outside of Florida," they warned. "Even worse, it plants the sinister thought that enslavement and continued harm toward Black people today is also acceptable and beneficial."
Flordia's mandated instruction that enslaved people developed "skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit" has garnered national attention but "is not the only dangerous falsehood," the quartet highlighted. They pointed out that the curriculum for middle school students "also requires downplaying and tempering the horror of American slavery by requiring it is coupled with teaching, 'how slavery was utilized in Asian, European, and African cultures,' 'the similarities and differences between serfdom and slavery,' and 'comparative treatment of indentured servants of European and African extraction.'"
Additionally, for high schoolers, the standards "list massacres of Black people in America as, 'examples of acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans,' falsely assigning shared responsibility to Black victims," the lawmakers noted.
"We demand the Florida Board of Education immediately reverse its decision," they concluded. "Not repealing these new standards would dig up the corpse of the worst version of our nation and force our children to live in it."
Frost, Cherfilus-McCormick, Wilson, and Horsford aren't the only critics of the Florida curriculum in Congress. U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a Black former teacher and principal, tweeted Friday that "this is an outright attempt to rewrite history and ignore America's past of racial exploitation and violence and the trauma from the impact of slavery on Black Americans."
Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.)—a son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson—thanked Vice President Kamala Harris "for standing up for the truth" by blasting the Florida standards and declared that "we must be true to our history, even when it's painful."
The national alarm over Florida's curriculum comes after the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—now a GOP 2024 presidential candidate—earned widespread criticism earlier this year for rejecting an Advanced Placement course about African American studies for high school students.
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