Congressional Black Caucus A Collection of Useless Self-Dealing DNC Sock Puppets

NewYorker  |  At eighty-eight, Conyers was the longest-serving active member of Congress, having represented his district since 1965, the year that the Voting Rights Act was signed. Earlier this year, the film “Detroit” depicted his attempts to defuse the riots that struck that city in 1967. In 1971, Conyers, with twelve other representatives and the delegate from Washington, D.C., founded the Congressional Black Caucus, a legislative bloc that has since more than tripled in size. Since 1989, he has annually introduced a bill to create a commission to study the institution of slavery and to recommend appropriate reparations. Before November 20th, when BuzzFeed posted a story about numerous allegations of sexual harassment made by former staff members and the payment of a secret financial settlement (Conyers denies the allegations), those were the primary reference points for Conyers. After the revelations, two weeks of acrimony, Conyers’s hospitalization for what his attorney called a “stress-related illness,” and his subsequent decision to retire, it is difficult to predict how his legacy will be assessed, and the extent to which these events will color his prior career.

Like other men accused in the post-Harvey Weinstein reckoning, Conyers’s position of power created the context in which the allegations against him are being discussed. But his case is complicated by the fact that he is also responsible for institutionalizing a social movement. The Congressional Black Caucus formed at the end of the civil-rights era, at a moment when African-American leadership was attempting to transfer its success in grassroots organizing into political power. The next year, Shirley Chisholm, a Caucus founder and the first black woman to serve in Congress, from New York, ran for President. The Caucus divided over the issue of supporting her—Conyers calculated that there was a bigger potential return in endorsing George McGovern—but the attention paid to Chisholm’s campaign brought recognition to the new group. Eventually, the ability of the C.B.C. members to hang onto their seats longer than other Congressional incumbents translated into seniority and authority on the Hill.

But, to some observers, the allegations against Conyers have renewed a sense that, over the years, authority has been challenged in a disproportionate way, particularly with regard to matters of ethics. It has been widely noted in the past that, in 2009, all seven of the House Ethics Committee investigations involved C.B.C. members. (An eighth, of Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Illinois, was dropped when the Justice Department began a separate investigation.) The next year, Charlie Rangel, another C.B.C. founder and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was found guilty of ethics charges relating to a failure to report income on a property in the Dominican Republic, improper fund-raising, and the wrongful use of rent-subsidized apartments in the building where he lived. He kept his seat, but when he was forced to relinquish his chairmanship some wondered whether part of the motive was to insure that the Obama era would not also feature a black man chairing the one of the most powerful committees in Congress. In 2012, National Journal reported that a third of sitting black lawmakers had been named in ethics investigations. Any number of factors may account for these figures, of course, but it was against this backdrop that the accusations involving Conyers played out.

On CNN, Angela Rye, who previously served as the executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, denounced “hypocrisy in the Democratic Party” for pursuing Conyers’s resignation more aggressively than it did for other officials accused of misbehavior. Politico reported that the caucus chairman, Representative Cedric Richmond, of Louisiana, concurred, saying, “I think the chorus of people that are calling for John to resign is noticeably larger than everyone else.” Last Thursday, Rep. Jim Clyburn, of South Carolina, urged Conyers to resign, but the majority of Caucus members made no comment. On November 28th, Richmond released a statement agreeing with Conyers’s decision to step down as the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, noting that “any decision to resign from office before the ethics investigation is complete is John’s decision to make.” Richmond added, however, that “the Congressional Black Caucus calls on Congress to treat all members who have been accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other crimes with parity, and we call on Congress and the public to afford members with due process as these very serious allegations are investigated.” Over the weekend, at a rally for Conyers in Detroit, the Reverend Wendell Anthony, of the N.A.A.C.P.’s local chapter, echoed that sentiment, telling the assembled supporters that they had “one commonality today, and that is due process.”