I broke my rule on entering my own name in the Google search engine this week. People from childhood friends to people more recently acquainted and made part of my life collectively clutched the pearls and asked, “Jamila, what happened? How did YOU get to talk at CPAC? Have they looked at anything you’ve ever said?”
Let’s start at the beginning.
I sit on the board of American Atheists. They are the rights organization dedicated to the separation of State and church founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair. They’re brash and smart. And they listen when I talk. (Come to the convention this April in Memphis. It’s going to be a great time!)
Last year, AA had a booth at CPAC, because using the phrase my friend Greta Christina taught me, cheering to the pep squad isn’t what the organization had in mind. AA was interested in reaching out to like minds in a place atheists aren’t often found. Also, AA President David Silverman wanted to attack the notion that conservatism and Christianity are one in the same. David’s use of the word “attack” was reported and quickly raised the ire of CPAC 2014 leadership. The group pulled American Atheist’s booth in the convention hall and argued that AA was only interested in being disruptive to the event. This wasn’t the intent at all in what AA was doing! We simply wanted to get in front of the ten thousand or so attendees at the event and be seen. David, Public Relations Director of American Atheists, Danielle Muscato, and I paid the attendee rate and stood a hotel corridor and handed out buttons and the cards that would have been displayed at the yanked booth.
So this year, David the tenacious, again tried to register a booth at the conference. And a meeting was called. Dan Schneider, the Executive Director of the American Conservative Union, sat down with David Silverman and I, and we spent hours going over the motivation of American Atheists, and what were our aims. Admittedly, I went in prepared for a fight. I made a point to say, “CPAC telling me ‘We don’t like your kind ’round here!’ doesn’t sit well with me.”
My raised hackles were soothed. My concerns about a number of issues- education, poverty, national security, the intrusion of religion into politics and into the lives of atheists, I talked about a bunch of this stuff! And Schneider heard me. And we found many points upon which we agree. And there were parts on which we didn’t. But I didn’t take lightly that I was asked to talk about what it would take to get my vote.
The American Atheist booth was still not accepted, BUT a compromise was agreed. Republican policy expert and atheist, Edwina Rogers organization, the Secular Policy Institute would have a booth at CPAC. American Atheists would be permitted to share space in that booth. And I would lay out the numbers case to all of CPAC about why secular conservatives actually have a place in the modern GOP.
So I gave my speech. I had four minutes to talk about why getting rid of religion in the GOP must happen. I called myself conservative and I said “I am part of a growing Republican family” that has to face the facts of demographic (and other) change in this country.
And people did come by the booth! Many signed up for their annual membership- free for one year for all who signed up at the conference. This is the progress that excited me and American Atheists. We got to show up. We weren’t kicked out. We had a number of good conversations. And we’ll be back next year, too!
But make no mistake, if or not AA had a booth at CPAC, there were plenty of atheists at the event already! Many of them came up and introduced themselves. And we made some good progress with those who let us know that they weren’t atheists, but their children, grandchildren and partners did identify as such.
Now, here’s where I take off my board member cap and speak only for myself.
I find it odd that people care what is my personal political bent. People claim to feel some betrayal that I identified myself as a part of a growing Republican family. (I can’t help the family I was born to, and I happen to love my GOP relations!) Folks are losing it because I demanded of 50% of our (alleged) two-party system that I should want to vote for them. Hell- I even invoked evolution of party ideals! There’s tape of me saying “The law is change or die!”
I refuse to be painted into a box on the topic of political identity, because such a box that would be fitting for me doesn’t exist. Forgive me while I appropriate some language here, but I’m personally “political-fluid.” I’m neither red nor blue. I’m purplish. And there are other streaks of green and black and plaid in there! I’m no slave to fashion, to religious thinking or political thinking.
I’m a conservative on issues of economics, immigration, and a few others. I’m socially liberal and I often agree with voices who exist on either/both sides of the political spectrum. The problem in this modern era is that folks define themselves based on one label or another, and often refuse to hear anything outside of their own viewpoint. That ain’t me. While I’m also not a senator’s son, I become restless and bored in echo chambers. I am a Freethinker. I am free to think. And I do this a great deal.
I believe there’s a lot of work needed right now to improve this country, and as the mother of a young child, I have literal skin in the game.
Folks, the US as I see it, is a house divided. Moreover it’s a house divided and on fire. And I don’t care who points out where are the exits that I may not see. I am not going to burn because someone I disagree with on some issue saw something that I missed. I want to preserve this Union. I want to get government back to the business of governing and have it remove itself from private affairs.
It is unacceptable to me that a family risks losing their 10 and 6 year old children because the parents permit the kids to walk alone from park to home in a 15 minute trip. It is unacceptable that the education outcomes in Mississippi (and most of the US) are what they are. It is unacceptable that the over-criminalization of African-American people and communities is discussed at the policy level only in terms of ending the protests and conflict that surround the issue. It is unacceptable that corporate interests are more important to many of our elected officials than the concerns of human people not corporations as “people” or money as “people.” I think smaller government is a good idea and we can begin by getting politics and religion out of medicine and research.
I went before a group who invited me. I talked policy with people who are looking for a way to appeal to more voters. And I found a number of people who agree with me. We have points of disagreement as well, but I’ve never been one to swear allegiance to one way of thinking and I will never promise to refuse common ground with folks who see the world differently from myself.
Some folks would never set foot at CPAC. It’s their right. Others think that my feminist sisters and I getting down at NOW conferences is a leap too far. I’ve attended too many Congressional Black Caucus events since living in DC for me to remember, and I’ve had people tell me I’m wasting my time to go to those as well.
I am willing to work for the improvement of this country in which I live. I’m willing to share ideas with folks who want to do the same with me.
I’ve been a critical thinker from the times the nuns who taught me in elementary school encouraged me to ask more and better questions. That’s what I do. I’m not ever going to NOT ask hard questions and think about difficult subjects.
One never grows if one never stretches. My appearance before CPAC was me making an attempt to stretch across to people who didn’t know they had a damn thing in common with a black, atheist, feminist, liberal, conservative, fan of hooks, Orwell, Hitchens, and Guy-Sheftall.
Look up, if you might, the legacy of the recently deceased Senator Edward Brooke. He was the first Black man elected to the US Senate as a member of the GOP since reconstruction. He died this January, and is sorely missed by many. He was a Republican who worked for fair housing, abortion rights (and tried to get funding for poor women!) and a bunch of other issues too. Today, I bet his party affiliation would have been dependent upon where he resided, and not his political beliefs. I think that’s a problem.
I’m not a pastor. I don’t preach. And certainly not to the converted. I had four minutes to lay out one specific case about the numbers of growing non-religious.
I believe I served us well.
To Freethought!
You are entirely correct that it is your right to go to CPAC.
However, American Atheists advertising my vote to Republicans is disingenuous at best, lying at worst. There are other Republican PACs that aren’t so far right as to fall out of the Overton window. CPAC jumps out that window willingly.
I respect you getting up there and talking to a group of people who do profoundly disagree with your worldview.
But you know what? This proves unequivocally to me that American Atheists doesn’t share my values, and that AA is a group that I want nothing to do with. I’d rather work with liberal or socialist religious who share my values than conservative atheists whose values are the opposite of mine.
There is likely a lot I’d disagree with you about, I’m pretty much a socialist, and I think Republicans (as they currently stand) controlling the United States isn’t just bad for your country but for my country and the rest of the world. However, I was shocked by some of the reaction you received. You didn’t suddenly turn into Rush Limbaugh or anything like that.
We were told that one of the points of this blog network was to provide a more diverse range of voices. If one of those voices is a little or even somewhat more diverse than the others, that’s a good thing. I’ll likely disagree with you about economics, immigration, or the value of a Republican government, but I know I’ll agree with you about plenty as well (I’ve been a Twitter follower for a while now (please ignore that I just accidentally unfollowed and refollowed, I was just bringing up your feed and clicked the wrong button).
Anyway, my point – diversity in voices on this blog network is a good thing.
I don’t agree with almost anything about Republicans in their present iteration, or conservatism in general (trying to keep the status quo when the status quo is objectively harmful is, itself, objectively harmful, and pining for the way things never used to be is rather delusional), but I will say that once upon a time the Republicans used to be “the loyal opposition”.
If every Republican was like you, Jamila, we wouldn’t be in the dire straits we’re in now. But they aren’t. I can only hope that you can effect some change from within while we push back against their theocratic goals from the outside.
I find it absolutely bizarre that you find it odd that people care what your politics are.
Translation: I don’t give a damn about poor people.
Utterly disingenuous: we know, and you know we know, that when you talked about the “conservative family” you were not talking about your relatives.
Of a piece with the flagrant dishonesty in your speech. You know very well that today’s Republican Party is completely different to that of 1966 – when Brooke was elected – let alone that of 1863. And that CPAC is the hard right of the party, willing to take sponsorship from overt white supremacists while excluding gays.
So? Atheist bigots and corporate shills are my enemies just as much as Christian bigots and corporate shills.
Yup, to this. Jamila, I applaud your good faith in people and the work you do to promote change.
@Jason #3: Did you read this bit?
Emphasis mine. As bad as all of the various social-identity-category marginalizations that Republicans near-unanimously back are, far and away the worst thing about the Right wing is its “I got mine, screw you” economic policies. Were so many of those social marginalizations not intertwined deeply with poverty – for the specific reason that economic opportunity in a market system is directly proportional to one’s degree of privilege – they would still be bad, but not nearly as harmful as they are. If every Republican was like Jamila, every Republican would also be like the (pro-gay-rights, pro-abortion-access, probably-atheist) Koch brothers – people who delight in exploiting the poor and vulnerable, but who aren’t especially bigoted. Gross. We’d still be in dire straights; the corruption of our democracy and extreme wealth (and thus opportunity) disparities are almost solely a function of Right-wing economic policy, which is utterly indefensible.
CPAC is the extremist wing of a party that considers the President illegitimate because he is black. The party where no serious contender for high office can admit to accepting the science of evolutionary biology, or of anthropogenic climate change. The party that has taken active steps, in the states where it has power to do so, to prevent black people and poor people from voting. The party that that has taken active steps, in the states where it has power to do so, to prevent women exercising their right to bodily autonomy. Whose convention are AA sending you to next, Ms. Bey? The Ku Klux Klan? The League of the South? The Constitution Party? The American Nazi Party?
Yes, John @6, I read it, and I stand by what I said. If most Republicans were like Jamila, we could discuss the ways that their economic stance hurts society generally and impact privilege specifically, and we would have a reasonable debate on all the things we think they’re getting wrong. As it stands, the Republicans you’re talking about are intractable, self-serving assbags. Jamila is not that. That is what I’m saying.
emphasis mine
They’re called “Democrats”.
I appreciate AA’s efforts to open their doors to conservative and right-of-center atheists. It’s true; atheism does not equal leftist politics. Penn Jellitte is a Libertarian, George Will is an agnostic, Charles Krauthammer is a secular Jew, Nat Henthoff is an anti-abortion Libertarian atheist, etc. And I also thought you gave a great speech.
However, the folks of CPAC tend to be the conservatives that swing so far to the Right that they’re borderline-fascist. And don’t we have enough sexists and transphobes in the atheist community without RWNJs?
Social issues and the economy are completely intertwined. It’s impossible to care about marginalized people and be fiscally conservative. Marginalized people tend to be the most poor….and Republicans absolutely hate poor people (and women, and people of color, and lgbtqi people, and people with disabilities, etc.). They’ve made their bigotry unambiguously clear. They have nothing to offer me–in fact, they’re completely focused on making my life and the lives of millions of others as difficult as possible. I know very little about American Atheists, but I’m quickly getting the impression that it’s an organization full of rich (well, at least not poor), white, straight, cis dudes (with perhaps a sprinkling of women) who like being all “fiscally conservative” and all that THAT entails. Barf.
I’m remarkably conservative on immigration too. Anyone who can’t trace their antecedents in America back to pre-contact (let’s arbitrarily pick 1490 as the year) needs to go back to where they came from.
I don’t know where these goddamned immigrants get off, coming here and stealing our land.
But seriously, anyone who lives in the Americas and considers themselves a conservative on immigration is remarkably short-sighted and/or arrogant (I’ll let you guess what combination I think manifests itself at CPAC).
Also, the Republicans stopped being the anti-establishment party during the Great Depression and their reactionary agenda became more fully formed during the Civil Rights era and in the 50 odd years since. That is a long time (longer than Jamila has been alive, surely) to maintain a loyalty to a party that insists on pursuing policies that actively make life terrible for people of colour, women, LGBTQ, poor people and working-class people.