Henry Hanks points out that Cynthia McKinney is trying to make a political comeback after the woman who ouster her in the Democratc Primary last time around decided to run for the Senate this year.
On her web site, McKinney uses the slogan, “Cynthia McKinney: The Voices for the Voiceless” and includes claims like this,
Cynthia was tapped by the Congressional Black Caucus to lead its effort on the Durban World Conference Against Racism. With her leadership, the Congressional Black Caucus spoke on this United Nations effort and at this important event, never once compromising on the rights of all peoples to come together and express their pain and suffering and ways to end it. Cynthia was unwilling to be silenced in the face of injustice.
McKinney, of course, leaves out her support for Zimbabwean strong man Robert Mugabe (the same Mugabe who recently called Desmond Tutu “angry, evil and embittered little bishop.”)
In 2001, the United States approved sanctions against Zimbabwe after Mugabe began a number of illegal tactics inlcuding seizing the lands of white farm owners, arresting politicians and newspaper editors who disagreed with him, and even denying that Zimbabwe had any sort of AIDS crisis because homosexuality was only a problem in decadent countries like the United States and Great Britain.
McKinney was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to speak out against the sanctions bill, and as far as I can tell the only pro-Mugabe politician in the Congress period.
The fascinating thing is that almost no one is aware of this. I e-mailed several prominent Left defenders of McKinney back in 2002 about what they thought of her pro-Zimbabwe stance and the reply back is inevitably “I had no idea she’d ever said anything like that” but of course there was never any follow-up afterward. McKinney’s support of Mugabe was apparently just not that interesting.