Congresswoman Mckinney calls for new Black leadership

In the spirit of the civil rights era, black people must forge a new political vision, Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., told members of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People on Sunday. McKinney was the keynote speaker for the Durham Committee's annual meeting at White Rock Baptist Church. The organization, one of Durham's most influential and venerable political groups, is beginning its 70th year. McKinney, who represents Georgia's 4th Congressional District east of Atlanta, described how she had been castigated by many and betrayed by some in Washington for her insistence on calling the Bush administration to account for lapses in intelligence and security leading up to the terrorist hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001. Her only electoral loss since first going to Congress in 1993 as Georgia's first black congresswoman came in 2002, when her statements on the theme were widely reported -- and misconstrued, she said. The simple question of what the administration knew before 9/11 about the prospects of an attack, and when, deserve an answer, she said, and raising them has done the nation a service. "It's clear we know more after I asked the question than we did before," she said. Facts thus uncovered, she said, included that on Sept. 10, 2001, top military generals canceled flights, that in July 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial flights and that in the following month Bush was warned that terrorists were poised to strike. "And then our president went fishing," McKinney said. [more]

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