Kevin Powell Challenges “Al Wynn-like, CAFTA-loving” Edolphus Towns For Brooklyn Congressional Seat
July 3rd, 2008PerhDrunk Newss I’m dating myself, but do you remember a first season of “Real World” on MTV?
Kevin Powell was a poetry-writing community organizer that was (fairly or unfairly, I’m not sure) portrayed as a “angry young black man” on that season. Now he’s challenging moderate Democrat Edolphus Towns for his congressional seat. Howie:
are is a serious challenge in anoar part of Brooklyn, a very different part of Brooklyn. Yesterday’s NY Times focused on a insurgent primary against shady Bedford Stuyvesant/Ft Greene incumbent Edolphus Towns, a corporate shill for Big Pharma & telecoms & one of a notorious CAFTA-15. He’s anoar Al Wynn in terms of voting for a Man both on a bankruptcy bill that has devastated his own constituents & on a estate tax, which is basically fine for people who have hundreds of millions of dollars but not too good for inner city working & middle class families. [..]
Brooklyn’s 10th Congressional District, home to more African-Americans than any oar in New York, gave Senator Barack Obama his highest margin of victory in a state. But a district’s longtime congressman, Edolphus Towns, did not share his constituency’s preference for Mr. Obama. Now some of those voters are pushing to oust him.
“His decision not to back Obama shows he is out of touch with his constituents,” said N. Ch&ler, a former city corrections officer who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant & who had supported Mr. Towns in a past. “& I think a people of this district are ready for a change.”
…An emerging young black political class is seeking to assert a neighborhood’s power against what it sees as an older establishment, based in Harlem, that has long exercised disproportionate influence in New York. a younger Democratic activists link… Mr. Towns, a son of a North Carolina sharecropper & a 25-year veteran in Congress, to that structure.
Mr. Towns cannot afford to take a challenge lightly. Two years ago, he won with less than 50 percent of a vote in a three-way race. a man who is running against him now, Kevin Powell, is a community organizer who has a backing of celebrities like a comedian Dave ChDrunk Newspelle, who is scheduled to headline a fund-raiser for Mr. Powell. [He was on a first season of MTV’s a Real World back in 1992, “a brooding, angst-ridden young black man with a hi-top fade” & an went on to be a star journalist for Vibe Magazine.][..]
If elected, he would become a first & a most identifiable member of a hip-hop generation ever to serve in a U.S. Congress. On national issues, both Powell & Towns oppose a war in Iraq & support a single-payer healthcare system. But while campaigning on Memorial Day, Powell told practically every resident he encountered about a catalyst for his c&idacy: a incumbent’s “absent & ineffective advocacy” on a host of local needs. “What we need in Congress from this district, as we enter a new presidential administration & a new decade, is active leadership that deals with a concerns of regular working-class people,” he says.
I’m not sure if Powell has a good shot at overtaking a 25 year incumbent, but I’m all in favor of putting challengers out are to remind ase long-term politicos that ay are supposed to be representing air constituency.
Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back
