{news} CTPOST-Seeing the black and white in a tight race

[Green Party-CT]

      Seeing the black, white in tight race        by Ken Dixon
Connecticut Post Online        Consumer advocate/political bomb thrower Ralph Nader and the Rev. Richard Bishop, radio minister/real estate agent, don't have much in common.      One's a Washington idealist. The other, Bishop, is a Bridgeport realist.   Bishop's sitting in a folding chair in the basement of Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport's hard-scrabble Hollow. He's leaning back, arms folded, legs jutting out from his sharp white linen suit as he waits for Ned Lamont to emerge with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who will anoint his campaign against Sen. Joe Lieberman.   Around him, people file in slowly, whether they're political operatives or members of the mostly African-American congregation, who'll soon be led in all three verses of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" by Pastor Anthony Bennett.      Nader's standing, hunched over, behind a podium in the cellar of the New Haven Public Library, wearing what looks like a 20-year-old suit, reading from remarks he wrote out
 on an ancient Underwood typewriter.      Behind him is an old, Depression-era mural of Rip Van Winkle, the Washington Irving character who finally wakes up after 40 years to discover a changed world. Nader's speaking to about 70 people, predominantly white New Havenites whose political leanings are decidedly to the starboard.      Bishop, whose radio ministry can be heard a couple times a week on WVOF 88.5 FM, is sitting there, talking about politicians in particular and the state of things for black people in general.      For minorities in southwestern Connecticut, Bishop says, life is getting worse, not better.   Born in the South, Bishop's mother, a maid afraid of raising her black son in the South, brought him to Connecticut in the mid-1950s, around the time that Ned Lamont, whose great-grandfather was a big-time Wall Street banker with J.P. Morgan, was born. Bishop, who lived with his mother in an attic on the wrong side of Putnam Avenue, was one of a handful of
 blacks back then who graduated from Greenwich High.   He believes that since the major civil-rights advances in the 1960s and 1970s, opportunities for blacks have sharply diminished.   "It's no different now than the 1950s," Bishop says, his voice rising in pitch. "It's like the city is a vacuum because folks can't reach the suburbs, 'cause it's not affordable. Who can afford a half-million-dollar? Who can afford a $250,000 house?"      Bishop's looking at this hyped-up Senate race as if it were business as usual. "What's Lamont gonna do that Lieberman couldn't do? I'd like to know," he says, in a mix of skepticism and disgust.      Sharpton offered a rambling, mostly coherent speech that rose, fell and soared again, culminating in a standing ovation for Lamont.   "He's the one who says it's not about the right wing or the left wing," Sharpton said. "Because a bird needs both wings to fly. The problem is we've had a one-winged bird. "A right-winged bird, rather than a
 balanced bird that will fight for education that will fight for health care, that will fight for world peace. I believe in a man that's brought both wings to the bird and we will fly in Connecticut next Tuesday. I believe I can fly, I believe we can fly, I believe we can touch the sky..."      The dour Nader was criticized by many Democrats and Lieberman for running for president on the Green Party ticket back in 2006, when Lieberman ran for both his Senate seat and vice president with Al Gore. "The political bigotry behind Lieberman's comments is that we should not have spoken out, petitioned and assembled in the form of a candidacy in 2000, because we should have left it to the Democratic Party, which has been shutting out consumer, environmental and worker groups for 25 years in Washington."
   
   Nader relishes the imminent irony if Lieberman fails to win the primary and files the 7,500 signatures needed to make the November ballot as an independent. "I need to congratulate him for joining the third-party forces but it's a little premature and we'll have to wait until next Tuesday," Nader, the idealist says, finally offering a smile. 
   
  You may reach Ken Dixon in the Capitol at (860) 549-4670 or e-mail him at dixon.connpost at snet.net.
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