Democrats Drop Names Of Slave-Owning Presidents From Fundraising Dinner

[RobertEarl]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by cbayer (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Courant

HARTFORD — Prompted by the national controversy over the Confederate flag, the state Democratic Party voted unanimously Wednesday night to change the name of its annual fundraising dinner and strip the names of two slave-owning American presidents.

For the past 67 years, the dinner has contained the names of Democratic presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. In later years, Democrats included famed former party boss John Bailey, and the annual event became widely known as the Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey Dinner.

<snip>

"Let's work together to show the rest of the state exactly what it means to be a Connecticut Democrat,'' party Chairman Nicholas Balletto said before introducing the resolution.

In part, the resolution said, "As members of the Democratic Party, we are proud of our history as the party of inclusion. Democrats have led the way on civil rights, LGBT equality and equal rights for women. … It is only fitting that the name of the party's most visible annual event reflects our dedication to diversity and forward-looking vision.''

Read more: http://www.courant.com/politics/hc-democratic-dinner-name-change-0723-20150722-story.html

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Day or so ago I posted this OP in GD...P about how the Party should change the names of these fundraising dinners.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=463620

[bravenak]

1. I have noticed that this bothers you.

I hate the founding fathers that owned slaves and want the money changed. Also the ones who killed or promoted the killing of native americans, hate them too. What's our plan? Help me out here, cause I'm with it. Let's smash things.

[RobertEarl]

3. Hell yes it bothers me

The use of slaveholders names has no place in modern era Democratic Party.

Now we can proudly say that the party is striving to overcome the racism in this country and are taking real steps for progress. And point to this progress as evidence.

[bravenak]

4. How do we do it? I'm with you.

The money part, I mean.

[RobertEarl]

7. At least the one state party stopped

I am now an even prouder Democrat, and will be even more so when all state parties have stopped using slaveholders names as a way to raise money and carry on official business.

[bravenak]

8. Me too. This is a good thing. I hope for more of this. Thanks for posting about it.

[marym625]

2. yep

Saw your op the other day. Never thought it would happen. At least not that quickly. Cool

[RobertEarl]

5. I of course take no credit

But it does show that I am in touch with how real Democrats think.

I might pm those who opposed the idea on that thread with this great news. I got some real nasty responses from some.

[merrily]

11. I served on a jury that alerted on posts of yours that identified Jefferson and Jackson as

slaveowners. Alert on a simple historical fact. I voted not to hide. (duh)

[RobertEarl]

12. One did get hidden

I will admit that I found this issue to be important enough to spread it around. Some members took objection to that spread and hid my post 4-3. I deleted others so that my hides did not add up.

Not a big deal. Like Skinner says - You take your chances

Here is the link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=467493

Since I can no longer post in that thread, would someone do me the favor of posting this news therein?

[Man from Pickens]

17. you made a common mistake here

Being right too early is a major cause of hidden posts.

I remember thinking something similar at the time, with the Jefferson-Jackson dinners happening just after the Charleston massacre, that when the Confederate flag was targeted as a symbol of racism and the two-minute hate (which your post was caught up in) was at its height that there was no way these dinners could keep their name without everyone involved looking like screaming hypocrites.

[merrily]

18. All the post I judged said was that the dinner was named after Jefferson and Jackson, who were

Last edited Fri Jul 24, 2015, 05:42 AM - Edit history (2)

holders. The name of the dinner was not open to controversy and neither was the slave-owning of those two Presidents. Posting a simple, widely-know fact, without more, should be taking a chance on DU.

[roody]

6. I love this. Our culture is changing

for the better.

[dbackjon]

9. This is asinine

We all have warts

I bet the guy whose name they kept wasn't a fan of gay rights we need to take him off as well

[RobertEarl]

10. That's a terrible attitude, dude

Progress is being made. And now our Black members can see we are serious about change.

[Man from Pickens]

13. What about Senator Robert Byrd?

Former KKK Grand Wizard or something like that, and his name is plastered on hundreds if not thousands of roads, highways, government buildings, and pretty much anything else that gets named by the government, due to his massive influence in the appropriations process.

[RobertEarl]

16. This is strictly party business

What states and locales do is up to them. I am not in Kentucky, so I will not tell them what they should do. But as a member of the great modern day Democratic Party, I shall not shy away from asking for real progress.

[merrily]

20. You can't distinguish that from continuing to name a Democratic Party dinner after a man who owned

slaves all his life, knowing it was wrong? Including his own children?


That said, if someone wants to rename a bridge named after Byrd or start a movement to rename everything named after Byrd, I would not be mad.

But, it's not as though you can't rename one Democratic Party dinner until everything in the US has been renamed, is it?

[dbackjon]

15. This isn't progress

No the attitude of trying to erase history and pretended didn't never existed is the attitude that should not be tolerated

We can't erase history our founding fathers were not perfect but they still founded a great country. This is one of the most idiotic things that come out of the Democratic Party in a long long time it's counterproductive and it does not help anything

[RobertEarl]

19. Erasing history?

Sorry, but you are off base. This is not erasing any history, but it is making progress in the Democratic Party.

The NAACP has wanted this change for a long time. They will now have it.

[Iris]

22. Exactly. And now the history is that the Democratic Party in VT

changed the name if their annual fundraiser in an attempt to be more inclusive. What's wrong with that?

We're all making history. History is all about change.

[Old and In the Way]

14. In todays world....

Jefferson would probably be a anti-slavery Independent and Jackson would be a full blooded confederate Republican.

[Bucky]

25. I almost hesitate to say this, but their closest modern equivalents would be

Jefferson today would basically be a Bernie Sanders Democrat, tho thoroughly unelectable in Virginia.

Ol' Hickory was more or less the Donald Trump of his day.

[nsd]

21. Mixed feelings.

I fully support removing the Confederate flag from public spaces. That flag was the flag of traitors. That flag in the 1860s was about supporting slavery. That flag in the 1960s was about supporting segregation. That flag is anti-American and has no place in modern American public life.

However, Jefferson and Jackson helped create America. Yes, they were bad people in some respects, but they really did help make this country. And they were both important in this party's history. In their case, I don't get what the value of a posthumous judgment is. A lot of the attraction of a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner is that we're celebrating the party's history, the fact that that history goes back to the early days of our republic.

[Xipe Totec]

23. Agreed. It's tricky judging outside the historical context.

I always return to this series for inspiration and contemplation when discussing what is today's version of the truth.

#t=58s

[Bucky]

24. other presidents we need to quit "honoring"

Pretty much every Democratic president before the Civil War supported the expansion of slavery into the new western territories, which was the main cause of the Civil War. None should ever be heralded.

Woodrow Wilson was a stark, vicious racist. Besides his love for the original Klan and the resegregation of the US government (desegregated under Roosevelt & Taft), he also was reluctant to get involved in the war of democracy against aristocracy (WW1) because he was more worried about the "inevitable" conflict between "the white race and the yellow race." Never trust a cause that names itself after this guy.

Franklin Roosevelt was not just reluctant to embrace even modest civil rights measures during his presidency, but was particularly eager to commit the still-unprosecuted war crime of the Nissei internment policy of all west coast Japanese-Americans. Progressive, Shprogressive... if you pine for the days of the New Deal, you're basically pining for racial concentration camps.

Harry Truman was an intellectually intolerant corrupt judge who set the tone for McCarthyism with his paranoid Red-baiting. And when it came to loathing far eastern Asians, he topped both of his Democratic predecessors by slaughtering over 100,000 Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (attacks that would have been unthinkable against white Germans). Eubie Blake might've been "wild about Harry" but we know better that to give a murderous racist a place of honor in naming our awards & fundraising ceremonies.

John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson designed an eternally escalating war policy in Vietnam that had a civilian kill rate equivalent to 10 Nagasakis. Both were also serial philanderers with an open contempt for the institution of marriage and a sexist mentality toward women. I would no sooner go to a Kennedy-Johnson Dinner for my party than I would launch a "Weiner-Spitzer Day" fundraiser. I simply respect women's equality and dignity too much to be so callous.

Jimmy Carter openly and flagrantly lusted in his heart. Don't go naming any fundraisers after this Walter Mitty-Don Juan mashup.

as far as I'm concerned, only two Democratic presidents have the immaculate moral slate worthy of our fundraising efforts, the 22nd and 24th presidents of the United States. Forget any good any of these mooks above stood up for. Forget that they were each products of their time and elected as national political leaders, not moral arbiters of timeless values. They each erred and each must be jettisoned if our halls of fame are to remain pure. If you want me to come to your fundraiser as a donor instead of a protestor, you better name it the Cleveland-Cleveland Day Dinner.

[cbayer]

26. Locking as duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141155205