Central America and beyond

Salvador snippets

2010-04-16T09:36:00.000-04:00

Last week I interviewed El Faro's Carlos Dada, who published a lengthy story on the Romero case based on an exclusive interview with Alvaro Saravia. It's long, but makes for a good read. I think the interview adds some context. It was published at the new Open Society Blog, which has some interesting stories, if I do say so myself. Perhaps worthy of note is the commentary on the piece by the irrepressibly contrarian Paolo Luers, who questions the style in which Dada wrote the piece, saying that it's hard to know at times who's voice is represented in the text -- Saravia's? Dada's? I think he raises some legitimate issues, but he could up just debating himself if El Faro doesn't respond. Meanwhile, the issue of amnesty (or rather, whether to reverse the old post-peace accord amnesty decree) has been revived in a way that we haven't experienced in many years. More on that later, if I ever get caught up with other tasks at hand.

Also, on March 7, Freedom House's Countries at the Crossroads report, a survey of democratic governance in selected countries, was released. I authored the report on El Salvador. Although it is dated 2010, it covers March 2005 to September 2009, which in the case of El Salvador is essentially the Tony Saca administration. Although in most ways, El Salvador is much better off in terms of governance indicators than other Central American countries, there's one issue that brought it's overall score down -- the absence of a Transparency Law. I personally think this issue is overrated, since most transparency laws in the region are not complied with at all, and institutions (like the IFAI in Mexico) find a way to subvert the intentions of the law.

Chavez vs. Chavez

2010-04-02T13:16:00.000-04:00

I was drawn to the comparison of the two Chavez's in Josh's Hemispheric Brief yesterday, especially by the op-ed by Prof. Jeffrey Rubin, who has lead a research team looking at social movements in recent years with funding from OSI's Latin America Program. In reading the two pieces, I think the main point of both -- the fundamental flaws of personality-driven politics -- is missed in the brief characterization above, which mostly highlights the positive aspects of both men.

In fact, Miriam Pawel, a journalist who's just written a book about Cesar Chavez, laments his over-idealization -- as one suspects from the title and subtitle: "Not just to praise Cesar: Cesar Chavez has been elevated to iconic status without his legacy having been critically examined". The main thrust of her piece is as follows:

The first half of the story has been widely told and Chavez's place in history justly celebrated. His birthday is already a holiday in California and several other states. But the David-versus-Goliath victories are only a piece of the Chavez story.

Chief among the lessons we should take from his life is that heroes are human, with real flaws. You follow them blindly at your own risk. The biggest regret that many who worked closely with Chavez now express is that they did not speak up for what they believed in when it might have mattered. They failed to fight to keep building a labor union when Chavez veered determinedly toward his vision of a communal movement for poor people, based on an ideology of sacrifice.

A second lesson is that the inspirational leaders who build movements are not necessarily suited to run organizations. Chavez was a brilliant strategist, most comfortable in the adversarial role he termed the "nonviolent Viet Cong." By contrast, he dismissed as "nonmissionary work" the day-to-day routine of administering a labor union, negotiating contracts and resolving grievances. He lacked the interest to focus on those more mundane issues -- or the will to delegate the work to others and relinquish control.

His insistence on absolute control demonstrates a third lesson: When you empower people, they may not choose to wield their power toward the goals you believe they should. Chavez was a risk-taker, and he taught others to take risks. But trusting workers to run their own union was one risk he adamantly refused to take. That cost farmworkers the best chance they ever had at building an effective and lasting union.

None of this appears in California's official curriculum, a selective and glowing account of Chavez's life, developed in conjunction with his heirs and adopted by the state Board of Education to fulfill the law that established Cesar Chavez Day.

And the money grafs of the Rubin piece similarly highlight the "lessons" of Hugo Chavez as failing to promote real democratic norms:

For Cesar Chavez to have succeeded in his dream of dignity and well-being for farmworkers, he would have needed to combine his visionary commitment to building a movement with attention to the day-to-day details of making a labor union work for its members. He would have had to set up procedures for debate and voting – a democracy inside the UFW movement. Farmworkers needed a progressive movement and democracy to be able to take on the interests of the powerful and sustain the gains for which they fought so hard.

The same is true for Hugo Chávez. To make good on his promises of dignity and well-being for poor Venezuelans, he needs to combine his movement with real commitment to democratic institutions and procedures before it’s too late. That means freeing the radio stations and newspapers to say what they want, bringing fairness and robust competition back to courts and elections, and keeping social movements mobilized and in the streets.

The movements behind Chávez, in turn, need to press for real change while insisting on the means to hold leaders accountable, not signing over their autonomy to one big, Chávez-led project. Venezuelans need not only a movement in the streets but the working, day-to-day practices of democracy to forge more humane alternatives to the brutal market economy that has devastated their country.

Don't mess with Texas

2010-03-28T15:36:00.005-04:00

From today's NYT book review of "Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire," a new book by historian Robert Perkinson:

As Perkinson sets out to tell the story of America’s movement from, in his words, “the age of slavery to the age of incarceration,” with the latter period beginning in the mid-1960s and continuing to the present day, he concentrates on Texas in part because the modern surge of its inmate population has far outstripped even the spike in national numbers. Between 1965 and 2000, the number of prisoners in the country rose by 600 percent; in Texas, the growth was twice that. The state ranks near the very top for the percentage of its people kept behind bars. And for well over a century, Texas has held to a perspective on penology — an outlook devoid even of the goal, let alone the reality, of rehabilitation — that now dominates the nation. The state, in Perkinson’s eyes, has provided a “template for a more fearful and vengeful society,” for a country that no longer aims, with its inmates, “to repair and redeem but to warehouse, avenge and permanently differentiate convicted criminals from law-abiding citizens.”

The template was mostly formed, according to “Texas Tough,” by slavery and its aftermath. Defeated in the Civil War, Texas and its Southern confederates were desperate to retain as much dominion as possible over their former slaves, and they found a way through law enforcement. Blacks seized for low-level crimes faced severe punishment with little chance of defending themselves in court. Perkinson tells of a black man sentenced to two years for stealing a pair of shoes and another sent away for five for snatching a bushel of corn. In the three years following the war, Texas’ inmate population nearly quadrupled — and darkened considerably in skin color, with former slaves soon outnumbering whites. Over the next few decades, these new black prisoners were rented out to an array of private businesses under a system known as convict leasing, which replicated slavery for its brutality and may well have exceeded it in disregard for human life....

Much as emancipation brought on a penal backlash against Southern blacks, so did the civil rights movement — except that this later reaction was national. Equal protection, desegregation and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty were quickly followed by tougher drug laws and crackdowns on crime that, with conscious intention or not, made blacks a target. Since the triumphs of the civil rights movement, the disparity between black and white incarceration rates has almost doubled. In the early 21st century, the country, Perkinson suggests, has in a sense become the late-19th-century South.

This blog has moved

2010-03-27T14:22:00.001-04:00

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Perverse incentives for law enforcement, at home and abroad

2010-03-27T13:08:00.005-04:00

With help from the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, the Washington Post today has a disturbing story today about ICE laying out perverse incentives for running up the numbers when it comes to deportations. Contrary to previous statements by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE chief John Morton that DHS would prioritize deportations of the most violent illegal immigrants, these reporters got their hands on some internal memos and spoke with anonymous employees detailing the new guidelines:

Since November, ICE field offices in Northern California, Dallas and
Chicago have issued new evaluation standards and work plans for enforcement agents who remove illegal immigrants from jails and prisons. In some cases, for example, the field offices are requiring that agents process an average of 40 to 60 cases a month to earn "excellent" ratings.

Such standards present a problem, said one San Francisco area agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal. Instead of taking a day to prepare a case against a legal resident with multiple convictions for serious crimes, agents may choose to process a drunk driver or nonviolent offender who agrees to leave the country voluntarily, because it will take only hours.

This reminds me of the numbers game that DEA and FBI agents working in Colombia are encouraged to play when working on extradition cases, as noted in a policy brief published last December by the Bogota-based Fundacion Ideas para la Paz (FIP). And their reporting was also based on interviews with former DEA and FBI agents:

“The DEA has statistical fever,” the same former DEA agent said. “You need to get those numbers.” By numbers he means arrests and extraditions. He added that during the reviews, his superiors would frequently ask him about why he did not have a higher number of arrests. “You won’t see it written down anywhere, but that’s what they care about,” the former DEA agent said, referring to the number of arrests.

A former FBI agent agreed with this assessment and said at times it applied to his agency as well, often for the budgetary reasons mentioned above. “Extradition of low level members of a drug trafficking organization, it’s a gimmee, it’s a bump in the stats. You got bodies. It doesn’t necessarily mean the investigation was particularly successful realistically speaking, but it looks good on paper. It looks good as far as the number of indictments and subsequent extraditions that came out of a particular case. Where again it’s easy. And if somebody happens to fall into that network that dragnet at the local level can be lumped into the conspiracy
they are. And the government agencies both in the host country and the US look all the more better for it. There’s a justification by numbers that needs to be demonstrated to hold on to whatever’s left of the counternarcotics portion of law enforcement’s budget because everything else is being diverted to national defense and counterterrorism.”

Honduras again, in Foreign Policy

2009-11-28T04:37:00.002-05:00

Here are a few graphs from a good op-ed (if I do say so myself) published this week at foreignpolicy.com:

Although coup leaders and others question Zelaya's method and motives, this crisis has revealed that many Hondurans still want a significant reform of their country's Constitution. It was the United States' own handpicked negotiator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who called the Honduran Constitution "the worst in the world." With neither any clause for impeachment nor any recourse for amendment, Arias had the document dead to rights. And it is easy to imagine the events of June repeating themselves if serious debate over constitutional reform does not continue once the facade of democracy is restored. Indeed, it is just this sort of national conversation that the majority of Hondurans still seem to desire. Just one month ago, 54 percent of Honduran respondents told a U.S. polling firm that a constitutional assembly would now be the best way for resolving the current crisis.

In the end, the Honduran people themselves will need to decide what, if any, changes they want to make to their Constitution, and whether any such changes can be made through a piecemeal reform process or whether a constitutional assembly to rewrite the document altogether will ultimately be necessary. For now, however, the United States should publicly support such a conversation, beyond Sunday's vote. And most importantly, it should do its part to ensure an open political environment exists for doing so.

In other words, don't bless these elections and walk away. Instead, Washington should maintain its suspension of government-to-government assistance and not recognize the newly elected regime until there is a full restoration of civil liberties and steps are taken to prosecute human rights abuses. Next, the Obama team should work with the Organization of American States and other democracies -- the vast majority of which is reluctant to endorse these elections -- to find a way to bring Honduras back into the international community. For starters, if the new government is to recover any semblance of legitimacy, it will need to ensure that adequate conditions exist for a broad and pluralistic debate and dialogue, including with respect to any constitutional issues. Moreover, such a dialogue should be seen as responding to the legitimate rights and concerns of Honduran citizens, rather than being branded as treason, as is customary for the coup government today.

Supporting this next process may be the only way for the United States to retain a trace of goodwill among many rightfully frustrated Hondurans -- not to mention the rest of Latin America, disappointed that five months of hemispheric unity might end because of a hasty and ill-considered decision to recognize Sunday's elections.

George Vickers is the director of international operations at the Open Society Institute.

What do they take us for, stupid?

2009-11-11T13:57:00.003-05:00

It's quite the indicator of just how mediocre the State Department has been that they think they can bluff their way through the various mixed signals they're responsible for. From Tyler Bridge's story posted yesterday in the Miami Herald:

The U.S. State Department helped broker a deal that called for the Honduran Congress to vote on whether to allow Zelaya to finish his term. But once Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon made televised comments last week that seemed to remove pressure from Washington, Honduras' Congress has made no plans to vote on whether to enact the agreement.

Shannon said last week that the deal meant that the Obama administration would accept the outcome of the Nov. 29 presidential and congressional elections, regardless of whether Zelaya was back in power.

... Shannon made his comments last week to CNN en Español. State Department spokesman Charles Luoma Overstreet in an e-mail to McClatchy questioned the widespread interpretation of what Shannon said and sent a transcript of the interview that left out the relevant quotes. The actual transcript shows Shannon twice confirming that the U.S. would respect the outcome of the elections no matter whether Zelaya were restored.

A senior State Department official declined to discuss Shannon's statements Monday, saying instead, ``What we're trying to do is get the parties to follow the accord. . . . If the accord is not implemented fully, that will affect international perceptions.''

Needless to say, this may be the first election anywhere, anytime, in which the legitimacy of a highly dubious electoral scenario is validated ex ante by the U.S. government.

Why the Guaymuras Accord is a lost cause, and other Saturday morning musings

2009-11-07T09:22:00.004-05:00

Even if the parties were to go back to the negotiating table, it is quite clear that the Honduran Congress will not agree to reverse their June 28 acceptance of Zelaya's resignation letter (that's right - that would be the letter with the fake Zelaya signature) anytime soon. As I argued yesterday, that's a clear precondition for moving forward with the unity government.

Lucia Newman, Aljazeera International's Latin America editor (and a respected former CNN correspondent and past winner of Maria Cabot Moors prize) noted Thursday:

"There is a lot that has not been worked out; the most important point is whether or not [Zelaya] the deposed president will be returned to power [before elections scheduled for November 29]. I can tell you that the way the numbers look, it does not look good for Zelaya."

And Tim Padgett has a quote from Pepe Lobo in the piece he filed yesterday for Time that demonstrates how hard it will be to push this back:

"Micheletti and Zelaya made a pact, and as long as that pact is carried out the world has to recognize the elections as valid," he says. "So at this point, what does it matter which of them is in office when the election is held?" Lobo also knows that as long as the vote is sanctioned by the U.S., from whom Honduras gets the lion's share of its trade and aid, he needn't lose too much sleep over the fact that the rest of the world will probably still refuse to recognize his election if Zelaya is not restored.

Other random readings this morning include the New York Times editorial , which has so many errors of fact and misinterpretation it's almost not worth reading. Rosemary Joyce laughs and cries at the State Department spokesperson's attempt to explain the inexplicable and defend the indefensible. For my money, the best editorials are always to be found in the Los Angeles Times, as in this Thursday editorial.

In addition to OAS Secretary General Insulza's strong comments yesterday about the need to restore Zelaya, only Bloomberg (also consistently reliable source of information) appears to report on the call by the foreign ministers of the Rio Group (a group of 23 Latin American and some Caribbean countries that notably does not include the U.S. or Canada, but does include key US allies such as Colombia, Mexico and Peru) that Zelaya's restitution is "imperative" and an "indispensable requirement."

Will Stibbens, Al Jazeera International's Washington Bureau Chief (and former Latin America regional editor of the the Associated Press Television Network) has a worthwhile editorial proclaiming the Honduran "oligarchy" to be the clear winners of this process so far. As for Zelaya:

After a bold and deft campaign to regain power, and with the prize within his grasp, he committed a critical, strategic blunder.

Zelaya believed that it would be enough to sacrifice his social project, and the mass movement that backed it, to convince his political enemies to restore him to the presidency.

His representatives signed an agreement that categorically forbids the convening of a national constituent assembly, or any other form of popular referendum on the constitution, but without a written guarantee of a return to power for Zelaya.

That was left up to the congress, who appear poised, in the face of US indifference, to deny him even this hollow victory.

As for other winners and losers, Stibbens continues:

What could have been a diplomatic victory for Washington, is now looking like another example of its clumsiness, which will end up exacerbating ideological divisions. If the agreement does collapse there will be repercussions, and collateral damage, throughout the region.
Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who from the start condemned the negotiating track led by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias as a trap, will be vindicated.

Rethinking the Honduran Deal

2009-11-06T11:32:00.004-05:00

Where to start in commenting on Honduras? The Economist piece cited in Josh's news summary today was on the money in its skepticism of the deal. Many of the rest of us, naively thinking that the Administration knew what it was doing when it declared victory with the Accord, were wrong. There was so much "constructive ambiguity" to how this deal would play out that there were far too many loopholes. I thought that the Administration (and Shannon) would not have touted an accord if they didn't think Zelaya would not be restored to power, if they didn't think that there were the votes in Congress to do this.

That's clearly the argument that Shannon used to persuade Zelaya to sign this. Indeed, on Friday, October 30th, the day after the accord, Shannon responded to the question about whether we might reach Nov. 29th elections with Micheletti still in power:

There is not a timeline for the congress to take a decision and the negotiators were very clear on this. In fact, last night, Mr. Zelaya’s chief negotiator came out and said that the commission could not impose a timeline on the congress because it was an independent institution. But there is a political dynamic here and a political imperative for the congress to move quickly on this decision. It’s just not something that can be ignored in the short term.

Granted, we all knew that there was no timeline, but statements like this plus reports from those close to Zelaya, indicated that there was reason to think that something would happen in Congress very quickly. That the National Party would see it in its interests to vote to return Zelaya to a basically powerless, caretaker post for a couple of months.

My own reaction to the accord was too much influenced by the often-times synchronized nature of accords -- if one side does one thing, the other side responds. Like Zelaya, I looked at the accord and saw Nov. 5 as D-Day -- because why would Zelaya supporters deem to integrate a government of national unity and reconciliation if Zelaya were not restored to power? (Zelaya took logic that a step further -- the swearing in of a new and legitimate cabinet requires a legitimate president, i.e., Zelaya, to do the job.)

Clearly we were not alone in this interpretation. In recent days, Lagos was clear that the return of Zelaya had to be part of the solution. On Tuesday, OAS Secretary General Insulza said: "La única salida de paz es restablecer al Presidente (Manuel) Zelaya por el escaso tiempo que le queda en la presidencia.... "Yo espero que [el congreso] lo hagan pronto. No creo que lo vayan a hacer hoy día, pero lo ideal sería que lo hicieran ya."

The accord just doesn't make sense from Zelaya's perspective unless he expected to be restored by Nov. 5th. It makes sense that Zelaya would not want to legitimate a "unity government" by sending hisrepresentatives to participate before he was restored to power.

And now that they are not there, the only way he would (and should) accept being restored to power is to redesign the entire cabinet. And what are the chances of that happening? I realize this would be largely symbolic, as his own presidency would have been at this point, but such symbolism is incredibly important -- the symbolism of allowing a country to throw out a president, and getting away with it by simply holding elections and moving on.

We started getting inklings of a far different interpretation of what we could expect to happen when Tom Shannon was quoted on CNN en Espanol a couple of days ago. (By the way, was that really the appropriate venue to finally be crystal clear about the US position?). In that 6-minute interview, Shannon clarified that Zelaya's return to power had nothing to do with the "unity government" or the elections -- that elections could happen without Zelaya's return, and the US would be okay with that.

"Officially, whatever happens in this process, the United States will recognize what happens on the 29th?" the CNN reporter asked Shannon (my translation). "Si - exactamente," replied Shannon.

At the same time, we now know that there were, in fact, incentives for the State Department's position. Indeed, The Hill reported last night that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) released the hold on Shannon and Valenzuela's nominations, noting:

Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary [of Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom] Shannon have assured me that the U.S. will recognize the outcome of the Honduran elections regardless of whether Manuel Zelaya is reinstated. I take our administration at their word that they will now side with the Honduran people and end their focus on the disgraced Zelaya.

Today we have word that, no sooner had DeMint's hold been lifted on Shannon, than was another one placed by Senator George Lemieux (newly appointed Florida Republican to replace Mel Martinez). According an email circulating from DC advocacy groups, he has done so "at the behest of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which is still furious over Secretary Shannon's impeccable handling of the Cuba OAS resolution earlier this year."

What's clear now is that this wasn't the great deal it was hyped up to be -- rather, it was a high-stakes poker game, and Zelaya got snookered. The US didn't "broker" or mediate this deal. All it did was weigh in one specific point about what the process would be to potentially return Zelaya to power -- i.e., send it to Congress, not the Supreme Court. Most all the other points were hardly different than what had been agreed upon weeks, if not months, ago.

Now that the Guaymuras Accord has failed, it's the US government with egg on its face. The State Department's defines sucess as the mere fact that it had persuaded everyone to come to an agreement about the rules of this poker game. Who wins or loses would be beside the point -- and so it's time to declare victory and move on. In its hasty zeal to reach an agreement, and end a diplomatic headache, the State Department has given us "diplomacy on the cheap" (as one former US diplomat referred to it a few weeks ago) and a fundamentally worse situation.

Why? The Economist (and one has to credit Michael Reid here) called it right when it predicted what would happen if Congress delayed:

...the united front against the coup in the outside world may buckle. The United States, which has already reopened its visa office in Tegucigalpa, the capital, appears willing to recognise the elections whether or not Congress votes to restore Mr Zelaya. But most of Latin America is unlikely to follow suit unless Mr Zelaya is reinstated before the ballot—especially since the head of the electoral tribunal says that anyone calling for a boycott will be jailed.

In addition to the ALBA countries, I think you can add Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile to the list of countries who do not recognize these elections, for starters. So hemispheric unity was shortlived, and the OAS will be more divided than before. Something else will have to budge to change this situation, as I rather doubt the US will be able to muster the two-thirds' vote needed to remove Honduras' suspension from the OAS. This is successful US diplomacy?

And the consequences of this for Honduras? Again, the Economist:

The army, having submitted to civilian authority for the past decade or more, has re-emerged as a political actor. An old-established two-party system is giving way to a far more polarising class divide. And the rule of law has been circumvented by both sides. “This is the repetition of 100 years of Honduran history,” says Mr Díaz Arrivillaga. “It’s the same ghosts: stopping communism, selective violations of human rights, constitutional breaches, and agreements among elites and caudillos sponsored by the United States. It’s nothing new.” In one of the poorest countries in the region, that lack of novelty is all the more depressing.

I fear we're in for months, if not years, of continued social and political conflict and unrest.

Some thoughts on Barack and his church

2008-03-15T22:10:00.001-04:00

I was just reading this op-ed written by Cass Sunstein, and I think I had an insight into why Obama might have stuck through some 20 years of services at Trinity UCC in Chicago with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, even when he didn't agree with everything that might have been said at any given moment. I think this whole thing strikes us as so politically foolish, and we think it's hard to understand how Obama could have let this happen at all. The problem with this perspective, however, may be the difference between the kind of politics we're used to seeing from our politicians, and the new kind of politics that Obama claims to (and very well may) represent. I don't think any of us believe that Obama holds political views that are similar to that of his pastor, although the political problem for him now is that people may start to think that he does. The root of the problem, speaking for myself (and perhaps for others), though, is why he didn't foresee this as an issue? Is he really not as politically smart as he's been cranked up to be?

The context that Obama's tried to put forth is one in which Wright is a hugely popular preacher (his is the largest congregation in the entire UCC denomination) and is someone who clearly speaks to the heart of the African-American community in Chicago -- the same community where Obama got his start as a community organizer, and which he represented in the Illinois State Senate. Wright married Obama and Michelle, he baptised their daughters, and he "brought Obama to Jesus." Yet, Obama must have heard Wright say some controversial things from time to time. But if that was the case, would it not have been so much easier for Obama to conveniently move on to a less controversial church -- to one that might not end up becoming a thorn in his political side should he ever seek higher office, say, that of U.S. Senator, or beyond? If Obama is such a smart a politician (which I think he is), or if his ambition is so great (something which I think any presidential candidate must have), why then did he not long ago take what was clearly the more politically expedient path, and move on to another church at the slightest hint of potential future controversy?

I don't want to reduce his spiritual motivations to that of pure political calculation, but think about the current situation as you read the op-ed from Sunstein that I link to above. Think about the Obama that Sunstein describes here -- fiercely independent, not afraid to listen to the deep beliefs of those who think differently -- and you'll see that he's not someone who's always going to take the politically correct or "safe" path to success. (Of course, one could also explain his remaining in Wright's church as a sign of pure loyalty -- but his public distancing of himself from Wright over a year ago, just as he announced his candidacy for the presidency, as well as his recent statements, surely underscores the limits to that hypothesis.)

So what strikes me about Obama's sticking with his church is that, given where Obama came from, I can imagine that he felt it was important not to lose touch with this Afro-centric perspective -- he wanted to be challenged, not just uplifted, when he went to church. And given his general inclination to think for himself, perhaps he got caught up in his own self-confidence, not thinking that he was going to have to "denounce and reject" the political views of someone from whom he had received a great deal of spiritual insight and comfort. Is this really all that inconsistent for a guy who's made a point of saying that he would sit down with dictators as a means of resolving political tensions!

So let's call him wildly naive, politically stupid, or unreasonably loyal, but we might also entertain the notion that he's actually practicing what he preaches -- namely, that the idea of accepting "the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point" is not something that you toss aside on your way to political power, rather it's what you embrace as the only possible way to get there.

WOLA and the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center in Mexico

2008-03-15T21:10:00.003-04:00

I'm glad to see that my old outfit, the Washington Office on Latin America, is starting to use youtube and videos.

Here we have Ana Paula Hernandez, fundraising consultant for the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, based in Guerrero, Mexico, talks to the Washington Office on Latin America about the relationship between the two organizations and WOLA's role in helping the Center achieve its mission.

Bob on Obama

2008-03-09T18:59:00.003-04:00

This is a third interview I did with one of my fellow Obama suppporters, while trying to get voters to come back Tuesday night for the precinct convention.

Why Adina is for Obama

2008-03-09T08:37:00.001-04:00

Why I support Obama

2008-03-04T16:59:00.004-05:00

I shot this with my camera a bit ago. It's Travis -- a 20-something recent political science graduate, originally from Abilene, now living in Fort Worth. We're working together today in Precinct 4071.

Hillary's Math Problem

2008-03-04T16:44:00.002-05:00

I haven't played around with the Slate delegate calculator, but Jonathan Alter at Newsweek has, and finds that Hillary could win the next sixteen contests handily and still not catch up in terms of pledged delegates.

So why, assuming wins Ohio today, will be forced to continue underwriting the Democratic mudslinging contest that is sure to unfold over the coming weeks, all to the benefit of John McCain?

GOTC (get out to caucus)

2008-03-04T15:53:00.000-05:00

Things have slowed down quite a bit, but there's a steady trickle. It's actually nice for us, because then we have time to talk to (usually self-identified) Obama supporters, to explain the inexplicable -- i.e., why they MUST vote twice today. As Bill Clinton says, Texas is the only place in the country where you can vote twice without getting arrested.

Turnout in this very Republican area is running 2-to-1 for the Democrats (oh, forgot to mention there is a GOP primary going on as well!) That's a total turnaround from the traditional numbers. Hard to know, but I will not be surprised if this precinct goes 2-to-1 for Obama, many of whom say they will come back at 7 pm tonight to caucus.

Why the heck does Texas have both a primary and a caucus?

2008-03-04T10:37:00.002-05:00

I've been asking that question for days, and had not yet gotten to the bottom of it. But I think the New Republic primer on the Texas primary explains it well:

Why The (Ridiculously Confusing) Hybrid System Exists
Up until about 30 years ago, Texas was a strong Democratic state, and presidential caucuses--the preferred system prior to 1976--were little more than local turf wars between the liberal and the conservative wings of the party establishment. According to Dr. Patrick Cox, Associate Director for Congressional and Political History at the University of Texas, prior to the 1970s, the Texas Democrats used the "unit rule," meaning that all delegates--often under the guidance of the governor--supported one candidate at the national convention. From about 1950 until the mid-'70s, the conservative wing dominated, most notably in the persons of governors R. Allan Shivers and John Connally, Jr.
But in the lead-up to the 1976 presidential nominations, conservative Democrats were concerned that the liberal faction was better organized--and that this would hurt the presidential aspirations of one of their own, then-senator Lloyd Bentsen. They made a forceful push for a primary, which they believed would give an edge to the more popular candidate, instead of the one with the best organization. Unable to roll the liberal wing of the party, the conservatives eventually settled on a compromise, where two-thirds of the pledged delegates (126 total) are decided by primary, and the remaining one-third (67) are decided in caucus. (Bentsen lost to Jimmy Carter anyway.)

Read the whole post for a good summary of further aspects of the primary/caucus system.

The joys of phone-banking

2008-03-04T09:42:00.001-05:00

I got this email from a friend on Sunday:

Omg-a lady just cried to me & told me that she knew God made me call because she was undecided & she is now going to vote for Obama!

From NBC's First Read today

2008-03-04T09:38:00.002-05:00

*** Other things to watch: Here are a few very plausible scenarios: Obama could net more delegates out of Vermont than Clinton does out of Ohio. Clinton can win both Ohio and Texas, 52%-48%, and lose the overall delegate battle tonight, thanks to how both Texas and Ohio award more delegates in African-American heavy areas as well as those crazy Texas caucuses. Speaking of Texas, Obama likely has a five-point cushion on the delegate front, meaning he could lose the state by five points and still net delegates. How will the media handle Clinton winning two states but Obama winning the most delegates tonight? Who wins the night? Bonus question: Who do we reward the state of Texas to if Clinton wins the popular vote in the primary but Obama nets the most delegates? And finally, for all the talk of bias against Clinton's campaign in the media, does anyone believe any other candidate could have lost 11-straight contests, be this far behind in delegates, and be simply two victories away from being back in the game? One thing the media has done is they've given Clinton every chance she wants to write her own comeback story. She gets another shot today.

Tuesday morning, 8:30 am

2008-03-04T09:35:00.000-05:00

So, we've got 4 people hanging out right now in front of the school
for Obama. Hillary: zero presence, not even a yard sign. So that's
positive!

I'm pleasantly surprised at the number of people interested in
caucusing tonight for Obama. And it's great when some short-haired,
redneck-looking guy in a pickup truck waves at you in support. To a
person, every African-American I've met is for Obama, and most are
planning to caucus tonight. I have a feeling the energy tonight is
going to be electric.

Organizing by email

2008-03-04T07:44:00.002-05:00

This is an example of the kind of go-get'm emails I've been receiving from our stellar organizer:

Fort Worth Warriors –

Time to shine…it’s Election Day! Before my official send off, I want to answer 3 quick questions:

Question: Should we switch the names on the sign-in sheets if someone from a non-viable group (ie. a few Edwards supporters) decides to switch their vote to Barack? Answer: We are working on it…for right now I wouldn’t mess with the sign-in sheets. I’ll try to get more info, though.
Question: What do we do if someone comes to the wrong location? Answer: Get them to the right location!!! They can’t caucus at your location – they’ve got to get in their car and drive as fast as they can to the new one!
Question: Where’s the party? Answer: 8:00p (or when your caucus gets out) at BoomerJack's Grill & Bar, 2600 West 7^th St., Fort Worth 76107 Come join!

Remember – enjoy today, breathe (frequently), and don’t forget that you’re part of an incredible team that supports you. And in the midst of all the craziness, take 5 seconds to remind yourself that you part of one of the most incredible campaigns in American history. That’s pretty remarkable.

Good luck, go get ‘em, and know that…

WE CAN!

All right, now off to the polls!

Election news slow tonight

2008-03-04T07:34:00.001-05:00

The Politex blog at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is one place to look for news, but it reports that results may be slowing in coming tonight:

Local election officials have told Politex that many polling places may not report their results until hours after the polls close at 7 p.m.

There are two reasons:

1) Polls officially close at 7 p.m. but those still in line will be allowed to vote. Local officials are bracing for the possibility that some polling locations may have more than 100 people still waiting to vote at 7 p.m.

2) Many election clerks and judges plan on participating in the precinct conventions once everyone has voted and polls close. That means some won't deliver the poll results to the county until AFTER the precinct convention, which could be hours later.

The Texas Democratic Party sent me a memo from the Secretary of State's office that said, "The responsible election judge or clerk must complete the paperwork, finish making out returns, and deliver the records and ballots to the custodian before he or she may attend the precinct convention."
In practice, at least in Tarrant County, this isn't going to happen. Tarrant County Elections Administrator Steve Raborn said he wouldn't be surprised if some polling places don't report their results to him until after midnight because the election workers were at the precinct conventions. By 11 p.m. tomorrow, he wasn't sure if he would have results from 50 percent of the county's precincts.

The Texas Two-Step

2008-03-04T07:13:00.002-05:00

It's 6:15 am, and I'm at Starbucks in Fort Worth. I've been calling and walking and talking these past three days, and today's the big vote. I'll show up to my precinct in suburban southwest Fort Worth in about half an hour where, along with several other local volunteers, we'll maintain a "visibility" presence throughout the day, encouraging Obama voters (and, alas, surely a few others) to return to the precinct polling place (a local elementary school) later that night to caucus. Four of us met last night at the local Barnes and Nobles, and then participated in a conference call with our Obama Field Organizer, a very talented, articulate and detail-oriented 23-year-old (I'm guessing) Lily West, originally from the DC area. She's been in Iowa and Nevada, and lord knows where else for the past year, and she's a real pro. I'd hire her in a minute to organize just about anything.

I'd hoped to write some of my thoughts here earlier, but the "urgency of now" usually meant that I should make phone calls instead. Nevertheless, I'll try to do some mobile blogging today, in little snippets, whenever I have a moment's reprieve. We've got good weather for today, up to the 50s, after snowing briefly (and oddly last night) -- Saturday it was in the 80s!

I've been alternately depressed and inspired, and have absolutely NO idea what the day will be like. I did just hear that Texas's Secretary of State predicts a 3 million-plus turnout, breaking a record of some 20 years ago for a primary. What's for sure is that (1) many people are voting in their first primary ever, (2) probably 98% of those caucusing tonight will be doing so for the first time ever -- most people have never even heard of such a contraption!, and (3) I have no idea what kind of turnout the Clinton folks will deliver. Regarding the latter, they seem clearly less organized, in every conceivable way, but there is a bedrock of support for Hillary and Bill, and we'll see how that works out.

So stay tuned for the occasional, and hopefully not too mundane, observation throughout the day. Yes We Can!

Texas Diaries

2008-03-01T04:19:00.003-05:00

So, I'm headed to Fort Worth, Texas this morning (waiting for that 4:30 am cab to National Airport), land of my youth, to vote -- and to organize. Well, if I'm luckly I'll get to organize a precinct caucus, or convention (as they call it in Texas. Caucus rhymes with "raucus", which sounds more appropriate for Cowtown, but convention better describes the conventionally conservative politics of Fort Worth.) Anyway, I think I'll have some tales to tell. I'm glad I'm leaving early, because as it turns out I've got a precinct captain training at Obama headquarters on the North Side by the Stockyards at 10 am. Hillary was kind enough to schedule a rally at 11 am just outside our door as well, so perhaps I'll get a glimpse of her.

I'll be blogging once a day (starting tomorrow morning) at Burnt Orange Report, and may or may not cross-post here. Internet connections are not so prevalent down Texas way -- gotta make a run for the Panera Bread up on University Blvd, or the Panther Coffee Shop over by TCU, or -- if I'm lucky -- I'll be able to hijack a signal from a neighbor of my brother or mother. Okay, I guess it's obvious now that I've only gotten three hours sleep.

Anyway, I'm glad to go and knock on doors for the Obama campaign. I've been telling people ever since Feb. 4th that he has a chance of winning Texas, mainly because I've been reading the very political science-y analysis of such a possibility at the Burnt Orange Report, but now it seems like it's going to happen. Maybe it'll be something to tell the grandkids about, er...., well, make that something to tell other people's grandkids about -- how I helped wrap up the Obama nomination in Texas.

'1,000 years in Iraq'

2008-02-29T07:46:00.000-05:00

This is good: