There's More Left, If You're Hungry (For Change)

PUBLISHED : SAT, 12 JUL 2014, 06:25 PM
UPDATED : MON, 14 JUL 2014, 07:45 PM

Response to "Nothing Left" by Adolph Reed, Jr.

There's a way forward, to break through the stranglehold that neoliberals have over the Democratic Party, but, to do it, leftists need to leave the Democratic Party. In "Nothing Left," an essay by Adolph Reed, Jr., in the March issue of Harper's, Mr. Reed, described how the Democratic Party fails leftists in American politics. More or less, he described a Democratic Party that believed in working within a broken political system that affirms neoliberalism over the party's former New Deal politics. There are too many payoffs in the current broken political system for the Democrats to want reforms. Following is a response and commentary to Mr. Reed's essay. For years, activists in New York City have been trying to fight back against the influences of Big Business interests in local politics, but activists are stopped by party politics that want to see the correct Democrat elected into public office. Activists play a greater role in trying to bring about reforms, precisely because most voters do not participate in government, much less vote. In the mayoral election won by Bill de Blasio, only 24 percent of registered voters turned out to cast ballots, a rate of participation described as a record low by The New York Times. This compares with a 25 percent voter turnout in Detroit, a city in bankruptcy. A sense of voter powerlessness to fight back against the corruptive influence of money and lobbyists in politics is succeeding in suppressing voter turnout. "Three other cities showed an even deeper level of apathy. Atlanta had 17.2 percent turnout, Houston only 13.2 percent and Miami just 11 percent,” according to one report. This compares with an incredible recent peak in voter turnout of 93 percent in the 1953 New York City mayoral election. Voters have come to believe that their participation doesn’t make a difference, and in the age of the corrupt Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, they are almost right. The lack of voter participation means that activists play a larger than normal role in how political, legal, and economic issues get put on the social agenda. We know that activists are passionate, because they are driven by motivations to change the system when they take up causes. One consequence to how how we compensate for the lack of voter participation is that the same activists keep showing up over and over again for a variety of issues. In the face of such great voter apathy, some activists speak of inactive voters as uneducated, because if voters truly appreciated what was at stake in the broken political system, voters would get involved. Voters need to become activated, so that they can claim their rightful role in overhauling the broken political system. Otherwise, going forward, as in for the past decades, some activists (or, some political operatives is more like it) will take for granted that only activists or political operatives will know what reforms are needed, because only activists and political operatives know the lay of the corrupt political landscape. A huge contributing factor that keeps such super-majority percentages of voters inactive is the failure of mainstream media to fully report the truth about the depths of corruption in how elected officials run the business of government. And activists and political operatives know the truth about how corrupt the system is, but they don't do much of anything to challenge the press to fully report the truth about corruption. Somehow, the same small numbers of activists and political operatives have yet to overcome the limitations imposed by the failed mainstream media, and this keeps inactive voters in the dark. Compounding this dysfunction is the fact that some activists readily accept some aspects of the corrupt political landscape, and these activists adjust themselves accordingly to the corruption, as opposed to fighting it. Once they play by the rules of the broken political system, some activists adopt downsized scopes of reforms to make nice-nice with the power players of the broken political system. To varying degrees, Mr. Reed and others have previously described this phenomenon. Where is the Democratic Party in all this ? Democrats only care about winning elections, not rolling out fundamental reforms to overhaul the broken political system. Brining back online the inactive voters doesn't matter to Democrats, because elections can be still be won without the participation of inactive voters. Making matters worse, the Democratic Party uses what Jane Hamsher describes as "veal pens" to proverbially lock-up activists and nonprofit organizations in a state of atrophy to deescalate demands for political reforms from the political left. Except for a few brave souls, the mainstream media buys into these and other deceptions of the Democratic Party for several reasons. Some politicians, their political operatives, and their lobbyists employ teams of people to feed the media only approved talking points. Some reporters make the mistake of thinking that they have become "friends" with politicians and their enablers, losing their objectivity in the process. The influence of of corporate owners and editors slant reporting coverage according to suitable idealogical packaging. The media has often been describe to move with a pack mentality, they themselves not wanting to appear to be dissenting from their peers. And sometimes, the few brave souls, who do report the truth about government and political corruption, face a loss of access to each of sources, political gossip, or other professional privileges. Many times, this retaliation plays out privately, as the spurned reporter tries to do damage control out of the view and judgement of their peers and possible future employers. Given that Democratic Party insiders and political operatives know this, it is not difficult for Democrats to try to control the media. In respect of the media, several important things have happened in the time leading up to, and since, Mr. de Blasio was elected as mayor that can act as reality checks on the City Hall press corps. First, while LGBT activists were rejecting the "identity politics" of former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in favor of substance, Mr. de Blasio rolled out his family, offering a "biographical narrative" to take center stage in his cornerstone promise to "end the stop-and-frisk era," a promise that was devoid of truth, in turns out, when Mr. de Blasio move the goal posts to "stop the over-use of stop-and-frisk" with the subsequent appointment of William Bratton as police commissioner, a move which the media largely did not challenge as being incongruent with Mr. de Blasio's campaign promises. At a lengthy public forum of some of the city's top political reporters held after last year's Democratic mayoral primary election, some reporters openly disavowed any duty to vet candidates for public office. As a consequence of this attitude, many reporters admitted that they had failed to scrutinize Mr. de Blasio before last year's Democratic primary race. For those few New Yorkers planning to vote, relying on the press for information was a dangerous proposition, because the city's top political reporters were saying that voters were on their own to make sense of the broken political system. Resistance to reforms that borders on needing to keep the system corruptible Who can forget Rep. Nancy Pelosi's three-part interview (Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3) revealing interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in which Rep. Pelosi refused to come clean about the Democratic Party's reliance on Big Money campaign contributions, amongst other controversies. Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised to clean up Albany of corruption, but he refused to close a gaping loophole through which Big Money campaign donors funnel campaign contributions to elected officials as a way to control the government's agenda. One of Mayor de Blasio's closest political operatives, Scott Levenson, faces what has been described as multiple possible investigations due to allegations of campaign finance violations, but the mayor refuses to update the city's campaign finance laws, as he promised he would during last year's mayoral campaign. Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito hired lobbyists in a shady campaign to become the City Council speaker, pledging to turn the page from the corrupt record of her predecessor, but, now that she's in power, she's waging an effort to take control over the city's Board of Elections, "giving her power and control of a host of patronage jobs," according to The New York Daily News. Other issues, like how Gov. Cuomo was carrying out a state-sponsored plan to close hospitals across New York City, were never reported in the mainstream media with the full truth about what was truly happening. Even when Mr. de Blasio was reportedly described as trying to save Long Island College Hospital when he was only a candidate for mayor, he never fully tied the wave of hospital closings back to Gov. Cuomo's Medicaid Redesign Team. When the media did work itself up into a frenzy, like when one of the mayor's political supporters, Bishop Orlando Findlayter, was let out of jail on account of alleged intervention from City Hall, the mayor blocked the release of possibly damaging (or incriminating) evidence. At the conclusion of last year, The New York Times opined that no matter the real reason former Council Speaker Quinn lost the mayoral race, it wasn't because of any "major ethical lapses," contrary to the multiple examples of ethical lapses chronicled in Roots of Betrayal : The Ethics of Christine Quinn. One way or another, the corrupt system finds a way to keep the truth from being reported. Whenever the media is interested in covering a story, like with Bishop Findlayter's arrest, the government denies requests made under freedom of information laws. Some political bloggers and government reform advocates believe that Mayor de Blasio's denial of freedom of information law requests for Bishop Findlayter's arrest report, for example, is in keeping with the Obama administration's pattern of denying requests made under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Amongst the many outstanding FOIA requests pending before the Obama administration is a request for records about the government's vindictive prosecution of activists, including the prosecution of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal hero, Lt. Daniel Choi. It's easier for the press to politically report that the Obama administration is denying FOIA requests than it is to show how the Obama administration has been targeting activists for vindictive prosecution. The political climate facing government reform activists within the Democratic Party is so severe, that pressuring the Democratic Party for reforms routinely involves backlash, sometimes in the form of political retaliation. This environment of hostility is indicative that the Democratic Party doesn't stand for reforms. That is why you see political operatives, a/k/a "Yes Men," ring fence Democratic Party politicians from criticism. When grassroots activists make demands for reforms, the Yes Men deceptively water-down those demands for reform into downsized requests that can be easily met with empty rhetoric. Given this reality, how can voters mobilize to overhaul the broken political system, if some political operatives downsize their demands for reform -- at the same time when the press refuses to report the whole truth about corrupt elected officials ? The fairytale life of elected officials Part of the never-ending election strategy for the Democratic Party, indeed for any political party, is to establish and then maintain their leaders as likable characters. And so begins the requirement that followers can never question leaders, for, if one makes this irreconcilable error of questing a leader, then one gets shown the door. The Democratic Party spends millions on campaign consultants, lobbyists, focus groups, opinion polls, other messaging, and public relations that the party will not tolerate insiders, who undo these expensive media machinations. This is why voters get duped into buying the party line. Activists, who think they can operate an inside strategy, must first pledge to operate from a place of compromise -- there can be no criticisms of elected officials. This is why there is no room for dissent in expensive modern-day politics. Even when most progressives support immigration reform, for example, the Democrats, under Mayor de Blasio, go to such extremes as only allowing supporters of the city's new identification cards speak at official City Council hearings. Free speech and open debate go out the window. Regrettably, whole classes of nonprofit executives and activists sell-out their communities in exchange for insider access privileges. Even before Mayor de Blasio took office, former Council Speaker Quinn had established new norms of what it meant to be a neoliberal Democrat in New York City. Her relationship with real estate developers, chambers of commerce-like groups like the Partnership for New York City, and big money campaign donors like Rudin Management Company, have served as a pattern for Mayor de Blasio to follow as he seeks constant approval from Big Business interests. Moving in the same Big Business interest circles of former Speaker Quinn, Mayor de Blasio perpetuates the corrupt nexus of insider access and and a culture of backroom power deals for which activists once criticized former Speaker Quinn for having embraced, but the press doesn’t report things this way. Having made his Black family the core of Mayor de Blasio's identity prevents critics from raising race as an issue, even as some of Mayor de Blasio's policies have unfair racial overtones. Look at how easily Mayor de Blasio sold out on his pledge to reform policing in New York City when he authorized the police to undertake military-style invasions of public housing projects -- public housing projects -- and blaming some of the poor for the desperate lives that some of them live on account of the broken political system that never addresses the underlying conditions, which cause that desperation, a broken political system which Mayor de Blasio so very well represents. Police raids are sinister forms of behavior modification that blames victims for being poor, and that the targets of these policing actions are largely people of color goes unexamined by the media and by long-time activists, who have, by now, adapted to the new political realities of no expectations of reforms under the Democratic mayor. That the new police commissioner has promised to keep using the racist and classist "broken windows theory" of policing means that the mayor was all talk about police reform. Now that race is not a safe subject for examination, the media fails to look at how political operatives undertook efforts last year to manufacture a spike in voter turn-out in Black voting districts as a way to help elect the next mayor. Whenever the mayor does find himself under criticism from his political left, he relieves the pressure by spouting the right buzzwords, talking points about how he's a "progressive." Mayor de Blasio likes to tout his record of having signed new labor contracts with the municipal unions. NEWSFLASH : Any Democratic mayor had to give the unions new contracts. It's not rocket science to do what the unions, which elected you, tell you to do. The left, whom Mayor de Blasio will not accommodate, gets "trashed" the way activists in other social movements were once rolled over for not adapting to the corrupt status quo. Seeing the political landscape for what it is, first ; and then organizing for reforms, second One can most visibly see this dysfunctional dynamic play out between the Democratic Party, the mayor, nonprofit groups, political operatives, lobbyists, and activists in the police reform movement. Inside this dysfunction, nonprofit organizations and their executives play by the rules of the broken political system. They lock themselves -- and others -- up in "veal pens," where the goal of the broken political system goal is for activists to atrophy and waste away. If one tries to expose how some nonprofit groups are duplicitous in this dysfunction, then it is as if one has kicked a proverbial hornets' next -- one is going to get stung for pulling back the curtain on this political charade. And the veal pens and the stingings are very effective to condition activists to obey the rules of the broken political system. The totality of this dysfunctional political dynamic is given to us by a broken political system in which Democrats fully participate, that goes to great lengths -- indeed, any length -- to avoid reforms. Besides Big Business interests, the Democratic Party has become beholden to a class of "professional" political operatives, campaign consultants, and lobbyists, such as Patrick Gaspard, Scott Levenson, George Arzt, Jonathan Rosen, Dan Levitan, and others, making it impossible to enact reforms within the Democratic Party given these co-opting political gatekeepers. Matters are so corrupt that this class of consultants and lobbyists become entrenched and form a permanent, unaccountable form of backroom government insiders. Helping these permanent government insiders stay in power is the fact that that they have learned to exploit the campaign regulations that are meant to make electoral contests open and fair. When one accounts for the added role of fundraising and bundling of campaign donations by these permanent government insiders, one can see how figures with significant political power operate in backrooms, with no accountability to voters. These permanent government insiders are also largely responsible for removing the ethic of public service from those serving in public office. And those activists, who blog or write about these truths, are labeled fringe activists as a way to marginalize and disenfranchise muckraking bloggers. At every point, the broken political system tries to discredit critics, who are only calling for an overhaul to end government and political corruption. One of the major reasons why leftists cannot reform the broken political system is that the Democratic Party has instituted a culture that prevents leftists from holding Democratic officials accountable for reforms. Activists are marginalized by the Democratic Party, a viewpoint more or less shared by Mr. Reed, forced into the political fringes, then accused of running outside pressure political tactics against corrupt or inept Democrats -- when an outside pressure politics strategy is the only approach that the broken political system leaves activists. The system blames activists for exhibiting disenfranchised behavior when it is the broken political system that causes this disenfranchisement in the first place ! The only hope for overhauling the broken political system, in my opinion, is for all of the inactive voters to become activated. The current system, where the same small pool of activists, some of whom organize from a place of privilege, move from one issue to another, in "solidarity," after each "crisis moment," as Mr. Reed pointed out, isn't enough to overhaul this system. It's not just the numbers that a successful overhaul needs, but new ideas, new voices, and enough of them -- so that the people represent themselves in the process to bring about necessary reforms. If activists need to come in out of the fringes, then voters, too, need to come in out of dormancy. People need to dial-up their civic engagement. Contrary to what Democrats, Big Business interests, and permanent government insiders would have voters believe, it will be O.K. if voters participate in their own reform movement. And there's more to civic engagement than just voting, as it should be. People need to find more and more ways to have a say in how the government conducts business on our behalf. Voters need to create new groups, new organizations, through which they can exert new pressures on the system for reform. These groups must be new, in order to circumvent the stranglehold that Democrats have on unions, nonprofit organizations, and other political clubs or groups. The first step to start organizing is to vote out the highest figurehead neoliberal Democrat, which would be New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and vote in a Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins, who can break the corrupt two-party hegemony in American politics. Voting in a Green Party governor would demonstrate that the government can survive the loss of a center-right Democrat to a true leftist. Considering the corrupt political landscape, this is actually the only way our government can survive. The second step to start organizing is for voters to establish a new relationship with how they get the real truth about government and political corruption. This either means challenging reporters to fully report the truth, or else it means supporting new platforms or structures of muckraking-reporting that can come in out of the fringes and fully go mainstream.

RELATED Nothing Left : The long, slow surrender of American liberals By : Adolph Reed, Jr. (Harper's)

VOCAL-NY amongst CPR community groups receiving over $7 million in FY15 City Council slush funds

Despite cheap "progressive" talk from mayor and new Council speaker, New York City Council is still disbursing speaker slush funds, even as one sitting Councilmember's funding had to be supervised due to pending corruption charges.

New York City Council Divvies Up $50 Million in Speaker Slush Funds http://t.co/jUmrGwJxMb via @WSJ

— Informed Voting (@informedvoting) June 25, 2014

RELATED New York City Council Divvies Up $50 Million in Speaker Slush Funds (The Wall Street Journal) Queens Councilman Ruben Wills arrested by Attorney General’s office in corruption probe (UPDATE) (Metro New York) MMV Slush Funds Report For Fiscal Year 2015 Adopted Expense : Budget Adjustment Summary / Schedule C (New York City.gov)

Slush funds allocated to VOCAL-NY include $25,000 for anti-Stop-and-Frisk workshops, even though Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned to end the "Stop-and-Frisk" era in NYPD policing. Following the Veal Pen Workshop for police reform at the Left Forum 2014, some of the member groups belonging to a coalition known as Communities United for Police Reform, or CPR, were shown to have influence over the stalled social movement to press the New York City government to deliver police reforms. When one of the stalling member groups in the CPR coalition, VOCAL-NY, was pressed about their role in deliberately deescalating public pressure for police reforms, a VOCAL-NY director, Jennifer Flynn Walker, had a meltdown on Twitter after activists pressed whether City Council slush funds played a role in CPR easing off pressure on the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration. "Professional" activists like Ms. Walker get a "seat at the table" next to powerholders, precisely because these "professional" activists accept government funding from the very politicians, who grassroots activists are targeting for legal reforms. Those government funding allocations come with implicit strings attached to not embarrass the politicians publicly, to not create any "scandals," and to settle for the low-bar "politics of the possible" that politicians, like Mayor Bill de Blasio, can deliver without upsetting his big money campaign donors. Some police reform activists believe that the mayor announced his controversial pick for NYPD commissioner to placate nervous billionaire real estate developers, who want to keep seeing escalating New York City real estate prices. The only way real estate prices can keep spiraling up out of control is by keeping all the youths and people of color either locked up in school or locked up in jail. Making do by accepting Mayor de Blasio's appointment of William Bratton as the new commissioner of the New York Police Department means that the City Council has to keep funding community programs to deal with police brutality and the violation of innocent people's rights. Indeed, the slush funds allocated to VOCAL-NY include $25,000 that are intended to "provide Know Your Rights workshops to inform people of their legal rights during police encounters (including stop, question and frisk) and role play de-escalation strategies in order to stay safe and calm." (Emphasis Added)

CPR member groups receiving FY15 slush funds are :   -  Bronx Defenders : $1,636,000   -  Legal Aid Society : $5,865,750   -  New York City Anti-Violence Project : $186,755   -  Streetwise & Safe : $10,000   -  VOCAL-NY : $62,000   -  Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice : $24,000 The controversial City Council practise of doling out slush funds was a hallmark issue in last year's mayoral campaign, and the slush fund allocations were used as an accusation of corruption against former Council Speaker Christine Quinn. According to her campaign promises, the new Council speaker, Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito, promised to bring reforms to the City Council never made possible under former Speaker Quinn's leadership. Alas, Speaker Mark-Viverito is using the shady distribution of slush funds to control strategic community groups for political reasons, which is no different from the motivations of her her predecessor. It's not known why VOCAL-NY still needs $25,000 for workshops that will train people how to deal with police use of "Stop-and-Frisk," if Mayor de Blasio campaigned to end the "Stop-and-Frisk" era at the NYPD. The right thing for VOCAL-NY to do is to come forward to press the mayor to deliver the full range of reforms at the NYPD that he supposedly gave lip service to in last year's mayoral election. Unless, of course, some of the CPR community groups are afraid to pressure the de Blasio-Mark-Viverito administration for the full range of legal reforms needed to end police brutality, violations of the Handschu Agreement, and other infringements of civil liberties and civil rights of innocent New Yorkers. For years, activist have wondered how could the City Council fund, on the one hand, police procedures that violate the Civil Rights Act protections of it citizens, at the same time when, on the other hand, the City Council is funding community groups for protection from police brutality ? What kind of duplicitous City Council budget are elected officials adopting ?

2014-05-31 Veal Pen (Left Forum) Contact Sheet (Twitter Handles) (FINAL)(2014-06-25 FY15 Schedule C Slush F... by Connaissable

A report back on activists, who expose and overcome the corrupt nonprofit industrial complex, puppet politicans, and veal pen bouncers

PUBLISHED : WED, 04 JUN 2014, 01:55 PM
UPDATED : SUN, 15 JUN 2014, 06:10 PM

FIRST NEWSLETTER : This week in the CPR veal pen #constantcontact (06 June 2014)

SECOND NEWSLETTER : Political Pressure for #NYPD Reforms #constantcontact #VealPen #MAPModel #Stage6 (10 June 2014)

Role of big special interest political donors, like George Soros, in Bill de Blasio's mayoralty, the veal pen, and the long pattern of failed political, LGBT, and nonprofit leadership

George Soros

In the last year, billionaire hedge fund investor George Soros has emerged as the 1% power player in New York City politics, having eclipsed former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Mr. Soros funds many liberal causes through foundation and charity structures, such as his Open Society Foundations, which triggers controversies from the Left as well as from the Right.

But Mr. Soros has not been satisfied with just funding groups from an arm's length distance. Rather, he appears to be crossing over into actual management of the political landscape of New York City by virtue of his grant-making. For example, his foundation funded Communities United for Police Reform, the primary umbrella organization that formerly called for police reform under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Now, CPR, as the group is known, has become demobilized and no longer calls for police reform, in spite of the fact that reforms to end discriminatory and abusive policing have yet to be fully proposed and enacted by Mayor Bill de Blasio. After Mayor de Blasio was elected, Mr. Soros' foundation also partially funded a "town hall" style tent on Canal Street that was called "Talking Transition." More on that later.

Bill de Blasio

After he won the general election, Mr. de Blasio was criticised for holding very few public events. However, he used the "Talking Transition" tent for some brief remarks and a photo op. At his appearance, the then mayor-elect made a post-election promise to select a police commissioner, who could restore trust with New Yorkers after the disastrous reign of former Commissioner Raymond Kelly. More on that shortly.

The "Talking Transition" tent gave the impression that the de Blasio administration was going to actually process all the feedback it received from the public into a responsive City Hall, however that impression turned out to be a misconception. His administration has thus far turned out to be very heavy-handed, with directives only moving in one direction, top-bottom. When Mr. Soros and other other foundations funded the "Talking Transition" tent, there was no transparency about what process would hold the new incoming elected officials accountable to the public's demands for improved programs, new policies, or government reforms. A danger of privately funding government functions, like the interaction between the public and their elected officials, is that there are no mechanisms for transparency and accountability.

Jennifer Flynn Walker

Jennifer Flynn Walker, a member of the Board of Directors of the community group VOCAL-NY, has received funding from Mr. Soros. She's used his backing to transform herself into a "professional" activist. She's organized protests against the sinister billionaire Koch Brothers, even though she's backed by the political billionaire Mr. Soros. Further, she's used this funding to exert control over certain issues in New York City, such as HIV/AIDS activism and police reform activism. But because of her reliance on big money donors, Ms. Flynn exemplifies the kind of "professional" activism that has become constrained by sensitivities to funding sources and donors. VOCAL-NY has gone through the motions to oppose issues like "broken windows theory" of policing practiced by Mayor de Blasio's controversial pick for police commissioner, William Bratton, but VOCAL-NY has completely eased off the pressure politics from last year. The only explanation for that is the cozy relationship that nonprofit executives want to maintain with their donors and with the mayor.

When the CEO of a large HIV/AIDS services organization in New York City was shown to be aiding the neoliberal Gov. Andrew Cuomo's efforts to make radical cuts to the Medicaid program, which included the closure of several hospitals in Brooklyn, Ms. Flynn defended the CEO's actions, because, in her view, nonprofit executives are counted upon by politicians to provide political cover for unpopular acts. Another time, Ms. Flynn trashed activists, possibly committing libel and character assassination, because some daring grassroots activists were pressing for deeper law enforcement reforms, which, it turns out, are opposed by Mayor de Blasio. When asked by one activist how could it be fair for Ms. Flynn to obstruct the outsider activism to demand greater reforms from the broken political system, Ms. Flynn chose not to answer. In her role, Ms. Flynn was there to protect politicians from popular uprisings from the citizenry. A large concern of hers was to keep her access to politicians and other powerholders and to protect her funding sources. And amongst the activist community, especially notable within the second wave of the women's rights movement, trashing was a vicious, nasty tactic that aims to delegitimize the activism of those, who usually call for revolutionary social movement reforms. If it was lost on Ms. Flynn the severity of what she was doing, she appeared to act with no remorse.

What obstructionist community leaders, such as Ms. Flynn, unknowingly reveal when they act to either trash grassroots activists or block government or social reforms, is that they pull back the curtain like in the movie, "The Wizard of Oz," revealing how the person turning and pulling the corrupt political knobs and switches can sometimes be a nonprofit executive.

One reason many grassroots activists encounter such grave resistance in reforming the broken political system is the very nature of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits exist, because they provide services that the government does not want to provide, or has been defunded to be unable to provide. Since some of these services are seen to be critical to communities, some people organize nonprofit legal entities and seek funding, in order to meet people's various needs. However, nonprofits are not accountable to voters, and they become led by a "professional" class of executives with no interest in pressing for deeper, government reforms, because that would upset the economics and the politics of nonprofits. Because Mr. Soros has a hand in funding nonprofit executives, such as Ms. Flynn, he is able to, by extension, help elected officials, whom he supports, such as Mayor de Blasio, by co-opting activists and political movements, a common complaint shared by critics of the nonprofit industrial complex.

Against a backdrop of a once in a lifetime crackdown on public and political corruption, activists in New York are demanding wholesale reforms of government and nonprofits. In a world influenced by Occupy Wall Street, activists are no longer settling for the crumbs of incrementalism.

Jonathan Soros

The only problem is that wealthy investors exert great influence on politics. The case of Mr. Soros is compounded by his son, Jonathan Soros. The younger Mr. Soros calls himself as reformer, but, contrary to his self-brandished moniker, he "secretly" met with Gov. Cuomo earlier this year to try to pressure Gov. Cuomo to adopt the corrupt New York City model of campaign finance for the rest of New York State. Secret meetings between billionaire businessmen and elected officials, with no transparency or opportunity for inclusion by voters, only serves to keep rendering the broken political system outside any accountability to voters. In last year's mayoral election, scandalous but accurate tabloid reporting by The New York Daily News showed how political operatives, campaign consultants, and lobbyists were able to game the New York City campaign finance model with the aid of Super PAC and 501(c)(4) political structures. Like Ms. Flynn in her own way, the younger Mr. Soros appeared to be downgrading calls for reforms, in this instance, to the state's campaign finance system, by taking a stance that was sure to keep the campaign finance system corrupt and broken for big money, special interests. It's a vicious circle, but there is a way for activists to expose and overcome this corruption.

Voters, activists, and the LGBT community are getting wiser about the corruption that blocks government and corporate reforms.

In the last two years, activists for reform have been given hope that the stranglehold that powerful nonprofits and corrupt politicians can be weakened. Joe Solmonese resigned as president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT advocacy organization in the United States. Voters in New York City voted Christine Quinn out of office, and Gay Men's Health Crisis CEO Marjorie Hill was forced out of her job. Additionally, Lisa Winters was arrested after allegations of misusing monies of the Bronx Community Pride Center. There was a way for average people keep corrupt leaders accountable.

Joe Solmonese

For years, grassroots LGBT civil rights activists across the nation were frustrated by the Human Rights Campaign, or HRC. The largest and best-funded LGBT group always appeared to stop short of demanding full LGBT equality, contrary to the hardline position of grassroots activists. At times, activists developed the sensibility that HRC was intentionally obstructing progress on the codification of LGBT civil rights.

Time and again, this perception was right. Under Mr. Solmonese, HRC never pressed President Barack Obama to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, never undertook direct action or other lobbying efforts to press for the repeal of the military's discriminatory policy against LGBT service members, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," never embraced trans* issues, and never pressed for a full federal civil rights bill to incorporate protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, amongst many criticisms that grassroots LGBT activists had of HRC. Seemingly worse, under Mr. Solmonese's direction, HRC began to score Defense Department military contractors and the manufacturers of other military equipment as some of the best workplaces for LGBT employees to pave the way to cultivate military contractors as major donors of HRC functions, raising an obvious conflict of interest. Since it was waging a campaign to recruit military contractors as donors, there was no way that HRC was going to promote military reforms, such as calling for an end of DADT. It's also been reported that some of HRC's largest donors are drone manufacturers, conflicting HRC from ever denouncing the Obama administration's use of drones. Another example of how community groups, in their quest for dollars, can obstruct radical social change.

Christine Quinn

During her 15 years in public office, former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn never passed any meaningful LGBT civil rights legislation in New York City. While other progressive municipal politicians, such as former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed the city to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples in a move that transformed the national march toward marriage equality, former Speaker Quinn did absolutely nothing to push the envelope for full LGBT equal civil rights. Not only was she a total disappointment, but she also did damage to many reform movements during her tenure.

Former Council Speaker Quinn opposed the strengthening of tenants rights in New York City's vicious real estate rental market. She overturned term limits imposed by the electorate for her own short-term political gain. She enabled the New York Police Department to wage increasingly controversial -- and ultimately illegal, according to federal courts -- tactics that proved to be racially-motivated. When activists tried to wage grassroots campaigns to save the closure of several community hospitals across New York City, former Council Speaker Quinn did nothing to help communities save their strategic community healthcare resources. Not surprisingly, when activists began to birddog former Council Speaker Quinn at political functions, it appeared that she had ordered her police detail to menace and harass protesters. The broken corrupt political system will go to any lengths to oppress calls for reform, even exploiting law enforcement. Ultimately, former Council Speaker Quinn was seen as nothing more than a puppet of her political campaign contributors, a harsh lesson that voters had to wait 15 years to learn.

Marjorie Hill

Under Ms. Hill's rocky, seven-year term as CEO, the venerable HIV/AIDS services organization Gay Men's Health Crisis, or GMHC, began a slow-motion collapse. Ms. Hill took for granted its support amongst the most oppressed populations with high HIV infection rates, namely, the Harlem Ballroom community. GMHC's exploitation of this artistic community drove the community to cease trusting GMHC and its agency officials. On the financial front, GMHC was experiencing serious reversals of fortune, including how the agency wasted so much money on fundraising expenses in connections with its annual AIDS Walk event and how the agency lost so much money on a controversial move to new office space. After the community had suffered enough under Ms. Hill, a grassroots effort began to see to her ouster from GMHC, a task that the reform community accomplished last year, just weeks after former Council Speaker Quinn was voted out of office.

Lisa Winters

Ms. Winters, the former executive director of the Bronx Community Pride Center, was sentenced to prison after it was shown in court that she had been stealing more than $143,000 from the nonprofit, amongst other charges. Ms. Winters's corruption drove the Bronx Community Price Center into closure. The corrupt political landscape of New York City routinely extends to its many nonprofit organizations, but reforms never seem to be enacted to improve transparency, accountability, or community participation in the nonprofits' governance. These nonprofits are supposed to aim to serve the community, but the community has no role in determining the acts of these nonprofits. The reason for this is that other nonprofit organization heads, such as Ms. Flynn, seek to obstruct reforms. Nonprofit executives, just like elected officials, don't want to be held accountable for their failures.

While activists have been able to oust some corrupt community leaders, others find a way to hang on.

Dirk McCall

Dirk McCall succeeded Ms. Winters as the executive director of the now-defunct Bronx Community Pride Center. Under Mr. McCall, many of the center's programs were cut as a result of a collapse of fundraising during the corruption investigation into Ms. Winters' administration of the nonprofit. Prior to Mr. McCall's term at the Bronx center, he worked as a campaign operative for several politicians, and he was a former president of the Stonewall Democratic Club, the city's largest LGBT political organization. Prior to that, Mr. McCall worked for the shady real estate lobbyist, James Capalino. Given Mr. McCall's career pattern with many of Manhattan's permanent government insiders, he has learned the ropes of what it means to protect the broken political system from community demands for reform. Because no matter how many "change" elections New Yorkers vote for, or how many "progressive" campaign promises that voters hear, the New York City government keeps on working only for permanent government insider-operatives, their lobbyists, the clients of those lobbyists, and big money donors.

When Mr. McCall worked at GMHC, he once attended a meeting with representatives of the Harlem Ballroom community. Mr. McCall was familiar with the complaints of Ballroom leaders, but Mr. McCall never undertook any efforts to make peace with activists. As many controversies engulfed the then GMHC CEO Marjorie Hill, Mr. McCall never demonstrated autonomous leadership by showing a different vision for the agency. Instead, as criticism piled up on Ms. Hill for the agency's financial losses, Mr. McCall reportedly arranged for Ms. Hill to receive an award from the Winter Pride gala organized by the Queens Pride Committee. At times, he appeared to be working as Ms. Hill's personal publicist rather than for fighting to serve the agency's best interest. At GMHC, Mr. McCall's philosophy was go along to get along. As with other "professional" activists and nonprofit executives, Mr. McCall came to be viewed by reform activists as an impediment to reform. Mr. McCall now works as the external affairs director for the office of Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., a soft landing job that few are able to decipher, unless Mr. Diaz plans to exploit Mr. McCall's corrupt network of contacts to launch a bid for city-wide office soon.

Glennda Testone

As with Ms. Flynn, Ms. Testone, the head of the New York City's largest LGBT pride house, is also tone deaf to demands for reform. Ms. Testone notoriously blocked reporters from being able to comment on the LGBT Community Center's Facebook page to avoid press questions about transparency and accountability in the wake of the criminal financial collapse of the Bronx Community Pride Center. This was after she had deliberately instructed the LGBT Community Center's spokesperson, Cindi Creager, to avoid any media inquiries made by The Village Voice.

Ms. Testone also violated the First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of assembly after she banned meetings by Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the LGBT Community Center. She then added to the controversy by instituting a "moratorium" on any discussion of the Palestinian struggle for peace and self-determination. This censorship, in response to pressure from Ms. Testone's wealthy supporters of Israel's anti-Palestinian policies, flew in the face of the LGBT community's commitment to diversity. The LGBT Community Center was always counted on to offer safe space for discussion of "controversial" issues, but that changed under Ms. Testone. Petitions, appeals to meet with the Center's board of directors, calls and letters did not succeed. Ultimately, the LGBT Community Center revised its policies, but only after activists staged an occupation of the LGBT Community Center, an embarrassing act that showed Ms. Testone for the obstructionist to freedom and reform that she truly represents. For the term that the ban was in place, the censorship drew negative headlines for Ms. Testone, but she survived the scrutiny, because her patrons and donors supported the controversial censorship, another sign that the wealthy donors service their own political interests, which may not always align with the calls for reform by grassroots activists.

Ms. Testone also spearheaded a town hall at the "Talking Transition" tent on Canal Street last November on LGBT issues. At the town hall, a foreshadowing of what many reform groups would face in the coming de Blasio administration, many activists were told to discuss the needs of the LGBT community that had been left neglected after the mayoralties of Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. But as Ms. Testone led that discussion, there was no talk of the money that would be needed to fund community proposals. And like that town hall, Mayor de Blasio's mayoralty has largely been all talk, without fully funding the social, economic, and legal resources needed by not just the LGBT community, but by all New Yorkers. In this instance, Ms. Testone was there to just let the community vent their frustrations, with no sincere intention to press the de Blasio administration for city resources. Ms. Testone is not about reform, but about placating the community.

Chad Griffin

Succeeding Mr. Solmonese as president of HRC was Chad Griffin, who has stirred up such a dust storm of controversy almost impossible for the imagination of critics of his predecessor. Mr. Griffin, like other national presidents of large lobbying organizations (Patricia Ireland of national NOW comes to mind) have traditionally used their perch to weave fantastical biographies in order to personify the movement that they are leading. Mr. Griffin has managed, with the carefully orchestrated media help of teams of politicians, government employees, supporters, and other political operatives, to portray himself as the "Rosa Parks" of the LGBT marriage equality moment, as absurd as that may sound. But the cynical leaders of some community groups are so narcissistic that they are not self aware of how they come across to the community as they wage these self-interested machinations for their own personal gain. These desperate measures detract from the true calls for fundamental reforms demanded by grassroots LGBT civil rights activists, and Mr. Griffin is actually misdirecting the resources of HRC to fabricate a Cinderella story of his own life, instead of fighting for a comprehensive federal LGBT civil rights bill, which for years has been the strategic focus of a growing number of activists, a move on which HRC still lags.

Critics of HRC see the organization as having become captive of not only Beltway politics, but also captive to both the political machinations of its big money donors and the narcism of is leadership. With the help of notable LGBT bloggers and activists, including Andrew Sullivan, Michael Petrelis, and others, the broader LGBT community is wising up to how the leadership of our community groups lead the movements for social, legal, and economic reforms astray.

Carl Siciliano

Because former Council Speaker Quinn never made it a political and budgetary priority to fully fund the resources needed to provide shelter to all homeless LGBT youth in New York City, the community has to put up with community group leaders, such as Carl Siciliano, who safely asks for small, incremental gains in beds at homeless shelters, which fails to adequately provide shelter to all homeless youths. Mr. Siciliano is the executive director of the Ali Forney Center, a shelter for homeless LGBT youths. Rather than wage pressure politics or direct action against politicians, Mr. Siciliano prefers to stay on their good side, leaving thousands of homeless LGBT youths on the streets, just because he is too timid and insecure to make a demand for all the resources to rollout shelter to anybody who needs it. Indeed, in one nasty episode of the last few years, Mr. Siciliano was seen trying to shut down a competing LGBT homeless shelter in a move that would have reduced the number of available beds to homeless LGBT youth. At that "Talking Transition" town hall chaired by Ms. Testone, Mr. Siciliano should have demanded the resources to full fund the needs of homeless LGBT youths, but, remember, that farcical town hall was not about resources, it was just about blowing a lot of hot air.

Why are community advocacy groups pitted against each other or determined to demobilize broader social movements, instead of trying to lift everybody up ? The fact is that there's only so much public assistance and private philanthropy, leading community advocacy groups to get stuck in an "us vs. them" worldview. The price society pays is that nobody dares to make a demand for all the resources needed to fully address social issues, like providing universal healthcare for everybody or providing shelter for all LGBT homeless youths. Where's the focus on the bigger picture to get *all* the needed resources ? As a result of how nonprofit organizations place a priority on maintaining close relationships with politicians and their big money donors, society never makes the underlying gains that reform activists demand. And for billionaire philanthropists, like the elder Mr. Soros, throwing a few coins here and there to community groups is a whole lot cheaper than facing the prospect of jacked-up income tax rates to fully fund the neglected government programs that nonprofit organizations are trying to address.

Scott Wiener

Another obstruction to government reforms can been seen in Supervisor Scott Wiener, an elected member to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Although not based in New York like all the rest, Mr. Wiener hails from the East Coast, and he has come to be seen as an impediment to the demands of his community. After winning election, Supervisor Wiener voted to allow San Francisco city officials to "repeal and amend voter-approved initiatives and to legislate expiration dates for voter-approved initiative measures," according to a Change.org petition mounted to oppose Supervisor Wiener's machinations to seek a municipal legislative leadership post. Mr. Wiener's anti-democratic move was seen as reminiscent of when former Council Speaker Quinn overturned term limits, which had been adopted after two voter referenda. A classic neoliberal said to be following in the corrupt footsteps of former Council Speaker Quinn in New York, Sup. Wiener has also proposed an extensive revision of San Francisco's environmental review process that would restrict the rights of citizens to appeal zone-busting real estate development projects in a move described by the press as a "developer's wet dream" come true. As with Ms. Flynn and Ms. Testone, Supervisor Wiener has also trashed the First Amendment rights of activists when he had the controversial blogger Michael Petrelis arrested over an attempt to take a photograph of Supervisor Wiener. Motivated to end Supervisor Wiener's controversial term in office, Mr. Petrelis is now running to unseat Supervisor Wiener from the Board of Supervisors. Whether the corrupt political insiders like it or not, activists are fighting for fundamental government reforms.

Richard Socarides

The extent to which nonprofit organization executives and other permanent political insider operatives, such as Richard Socarides, will sell-out the LGBT community is vast and almost endless. A Clinton administration "Yes Man," Mr. Socarides wrote a controversial memorandum of talking points that allowed former President Bill Clinton to defend his decision to sign into law the state-sponsored discrimination in the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. Since that time, Mr. Socarides has unsuccessfully tried to defend his enabling act. Mr. Socarides had other corrupt roles in the Clinton administration's controversial travel bans against people with HIV/AIDS and the roll-out of the discriminatory DADT military policy. Although activists are keeping track of Mr. Socarides's corrupt record of being a sell-out, the mainstream media, most notably The New York Times, refuses to take a deep dive to explain how politicians exploit unaccountable community leaders, such as Mr. Socarides, to oppose community demands for reforms.

Mr. Socarides continues to survive as a member of the corrupt political insider class of operatives in New York City. Recently, he has been serving on the board of directors of the State University of New York, where he was part of the concerted effort to close Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. Still doing damage, Mr. Socarides must surely be aware of how activists have succeeded in ousting other corrupt community leaders.

Ed Koch

Perhaps the granddaddy of all corrupt sell-out political LGBT leaders was former New York City Mayor Ed Koch. A closet-case, former Mayor Koch was resoundingly ridiculed by the LGBT community in New York for deliberately neglecting to take meaningful municipal action to address the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Many interpreted former Mayor Koch's hesitance as fear that he might possibly be outed as a homosexual. Such is the media bias to refuse to expose corruption by community leaders that when former Mayor Koch passed away last year, The New York Times published a controversial obituary that was sanitized of any mention of former Mayor Koch's failings at the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Only after LGBT and AIDS activists caused such a ruckus on social media did the editors of The New York Times correct former Mayor Koch's obituary to reflect the historical facts of his negligence.

Before his death, former Mayor Koch had been in frail health. During that time, former Council Speaker Quinn had elicited a political endorsement for her mayoral campaign from former Mayor Koch, but former Council Speaker Quinn's campaign people never recorded the endorsement for a TV advertisement campaign, lamenting the lost opportunity to capitalize one more time from the way corrupt political insiders support each other, no matter how detrimental that support is to the community-at-large.

The only way to make room for new leadership is to keep pushing the old one out.

Without adding to each of the cynicism of politics and the herculean efforts of activists to bring about government and social reforms, what lessons can voters and activists draw from this long overview of failed leaders ?

Voters and activists can take heed from the established pattern that corrupt leaders can be dethroned. The lessons of Mr. Solmonese at HRC, former Council Speaker Quinn in public office, Ms. Hill at GMHC, and Ms. Winters at the Bronx Community Pride Center is that corrupt leaders don't hold onto power forever. The community, led by activists, can organize efforts to bring new leaders to cornerstone community nonprofit groups that underpin critical social services. The process of their ouster may take some time, organizing, and efforting, but it has been shown that it can be done. The reasons that some corrupt community leaders have a knack for surviving, like Ms. Flynn, Ms. Testone, Mr. McCall, and Mr. Socarides, to name a few, is because the corrupt political system uses these front group leaders as a buffer against reform from their respective communities. No matter how severely Ms. Flynn trashes reform activists, or how many times corrupt politicians, like former Council Speaker Quinn, use police to target activists, or go all the way, like when Supervisor Wiener had the blogger Mr. Petrelis arrested, we are living in a remarkable era of reform. Activists and bloggers can see through nonprofit leaders' failed one-house legislative strategies. The community knows when a nonprofit executive keeps promising "reforms," but nothing keeps getting done over the span of many years. The community can see the numerous times that "empty suits" organize meaningless press conferences for reforms, but nothing ever happens to follow-up to pressure the corrupt political system to actually deliver reforms. Bloggers can connect the dots and draw a true picture of the corrupt political landscape much easier now than before. More and more, activists are not willing to accept the fabricated story lines by disappointing leaders, like Mr. Griffin. Whereas the mainstream media may deliberately refuse to report the full truth of the corrupt political landscape, activists are taking to blogging and social media to self-report the truth about corruption and the ways to bring it to an end.

If foundations, such as those run by the elder Mr. Soros, really cared about making wholesale reforms to government and breaking the power of corporations, they would fund pop-up tents in the top 50 cities across America to advocate for the Wall Street transaction tax. Instead, the pop-up tents they put up are meant to diffuse, confuse, and demobilize voters. The true test of their intention is what outcome are they trying to bring about, and, more and more, people are getting wiser to this important distinction.

As activists organize new social movements, more and more citizens will learn new insights about self-determination and self-governance. And although not perfect, some federal prosecutors, such as Preet Bharara, have finally begun a campaign to renew government integrity. Taken as a whole, this is a moment of renewal and optimism. Time and history are on our side. We can make the world a better place. We are making it happen now.

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