In an open letter released on Tuesday night, Alabama Democratic Party Secretary Val Bright slammed Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for ongoing attempts to overhaul the state party’s bylaws and leadership structure, saying the “true target” is “blacks.”
This whole saga started last August, when Jones led a failed coup of the Alabama Democratic Party during its election of officers, including an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Chairwoman Nancy Worley. Worley was the preferred choice of the Alabama Democratic Conference (ADC), which is known as the “black political caucus” of the state party.
Since then, formal challenges about that election were filed with the DNC, which is now attempting to force the state party to hold a new election of officers and drastically change the structure of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC) in a manner which would include less African Americans.
Worley has previously referred to the DNC’s call for a new election as “racial.”
Now, Bright is doubling down on that sentiment as the DNC-imposed Saturday deadline to hold the new election looms. This August 17 deadline is an extension past the 90-day window originally handed down to the state party, which has also already had its initial proposed bylaw changes rejected by the DNC.
In her open letter, which was released by the ADC on Facebook, Bright said, “I am so saddened, insulted and outraged at the DNC for their plan to strip voting rights from blacks elected to serve on the SDEC in order to give Doug Jones the ability to control the outcome of an election he has conspired to have in order to control the majority of blacks presently serving.”
Speaking specifically of Jones, Bright continued, “He attempted to replace those black officers in last year’s election with an almost entirely white slate and failed because black members voted his slate down. His insistence in this effort, aided by the DNC, speaks volumes to me and echoes what many of us have long understood.”
She then said that black Americans have historically been taken advantage of after being integral in a political movement’s success, comparing black support that aided Jones’ 2017 special election victory to the efforts to end “slavery” and “Jim Crow.”
“Although blacks have been faithful to the Democratic Party and are largely responsible for electing Doug Jones and any white seeking office in this state, once elected on the backs of blacks, the urgency to remove black leadership begins,” Bright stated.
“In other words, as long as we’re working in the fields all is well, but when we move to positions of authority, a challenge begins,” she added. “From slavery through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement, we are constantly being shown how little respect blacks receive for being hard working and loyal.”
Bright went on to say the electoral challenge to Worley is “a smoke screen to make it appear that Jones and the DNC is not attacking his true target, blacks.”
“This is a huge taint on the national Party and the Senator (Jones) who depends on our vote to get re-elected,” she concluded.
Bright’s full open letter follows (Editor’s note: Yellowhammer News split the letter into paragraphs for reading ease):
I am so saddened, insulted and outraged at the DNC for their plan to strip voting rights from blacks elected to serve on the SDEC in order to give Doug Jones the ability to control the outcome of an election he has conspired to have in order to control the majority of blacks presently serving. He attempted to replace those black officers in last year’s election with an almost entirely white slate and failed because black members voted his slate down. His insistence in this effort, aided by the DNC, speaks volumes to me and echoes what many of us have long understood.
Although blacks have been faithful to the Democratic Party and are largely responsible for electing Doug Jones and any white seeking office in this state, once elected on the backs of blacks, the urgency to remove black leadership begins. In other words, as long as we’re working in the fields all is well, but when we move to positions of authority, a challenge begins. From slavery through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement, we are constantly being shown how little respect blacks receive for being hard working and loyal.
PS. This Nancy thing is BS She is being fronted as a smoke screen to make it appear that Jones and the DNC is not attacking his true target, blacks! She has only been serving as chair for 5 years, no one attacked the previous Chairs who were friends of Jones.
Alabama has only 1/3 black voting population, who vote almost entirely Democratic. The majority white voting population for well over the last 10 years vote overwhelming Republican. This racially motivated shift changed, not only in Alabama but around the US as well. Long before Nancy and those of us presently serving were elected to office. We have been working to change and reorganize county organizations to bring active Democratic leadership to fruition in especially rural counties that overwhelming vote Republican. While this effort has not been seriously undertaken by previous Party administrations and the process is time consuming, the results will eventually bear fruit. It takes hard work and sometimes fighting many local “chieftains” throughout the state who’ve switched Parties but hold onto the positions to keep Republican control for their political benefit. All this and sadly we have for the last year been defending ourselves against a small element within our own Party who have conspired with Jones aided by the army of the DNC and the right wing media to keep them from stripping the black vote.
This is a huge taint on the national Party and the Senator who depends on our vote to get re-elected.
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Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
