THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW CYNTHIA MCKINNEY

...So we brought her case up before the House Agriculture Committee and had the regulations changed right then and there...

...And the tragedy is that there are still not enough voices being raised to say, "This hatred of the poor, of the women and the children, this is what is truly un-American...

...Now, I think, he's found some footing...

...The failures of the Democrats to put up good candidates, to run effective races, to build a genuine grassroots organization have accumulated, and Gingrich was able to recognize that and take advantage of it...

...But I would hasten to say that when Representative Cleo Fields ran for governor of Louisiana in 1995, we saw evidence that even the staunchest of white Democrats turn Republican when the Democratic nominee is black...

...That's how they would all say it—"of a personal nature"—but what they were really talking about was sexual harassment...

...So at the end of the day, we're going to win...

...We provide water for people who don't have running water in their homes...

...Then there were the court decisions undermining the majority-minority districts from which many members of the Caucus have been elected...

...Q: Much of the work you do on behalf of poor and working-class women is on an individual, case-by-case basis...

...Q: Have the Democrats failed to present a vision for America...

...Now, was he smart enough to avoid doing unethical or perhaps illegal things along the way...

...And then, in terms of policy, if you say that 6 percent unemployment is acceptable, then you open the door for more conservative economists to say that 7, 8, even 10 percent unemployment is acceptable...

...McKinney: Absolutely...

...Did you go with a sense of mission...

...They fussed at my campaign manager, who is a white male, because he was with me...

...Nor has she spared Democrats, criticizing them for viewing African Americans as "spare parts for their political ambitions...

...Q: You note that Gingrich gave the Republicans a vision...

...A three-judge panel drew a map that protected the likes of Gingrich but gave McKinney a mostly new district where only 30 percent of the voters are African Americans...

...That record has earned her the antipathy not merely of Republicans but of Democratic "good old boys" who have never been particularly comfortable with strong African-American women, and who are genuinely troubled by one so progressive and so articulate as McKinney...

...You've embraced Lani Guinier's proposal that America should look at creating multi-member Congressional districts, which would virtually assure minority groups better access to representation...

...It's as if hate reigns supreme...

...Q: Your race, in a 70 percent white district, will be a real test, won't it...

...McKinney: I guess you could probably say I've had my eye on Newt longer than most folks...

...Q: You have made the condition of poor women and rural women a particular focus of your tenure...

...Is that because of a sense that these were the people who had been most neglected...

...Do you see its positions as being closer to what the Democratic Party ought to be offering voters...

...McKinney: With multi-member districts, you really could get rid of race to the extent that we can get rid of it as an issue...

...Q: When the Republicans got control of Congress, they cut the funding for the Congressional Black Caucus...

...Educated as a political scientist, she taught college until 1988, when she was elected to the Georgia House, where she served with her father, Billy McKinney...

...We can take through this election a snapshot of where America is in the absence of minority districts...

...Everybody is welcome here...

...McKinney: With the hate-laden public policy that we are witnessing in Washington, one of the messages of the Democratic Party ought to be that there's room for everybody at our table...

...She won handily in November and was reelected with 66 percent of the vote in 1994...

...Q: Those victories have been harder to come by in a Congress where the agenda is set by Newt Gingrich...

...In the current Congress, there are too many members who would let the neglect continue...

...The women on the bus aren't from McKinney's district, but they still view her as their standard bearer...

...This woman had managed her husband's farm for seven years, but when she applied to get funding so that she could start her own farm, they said that she didn't have any experience...

...That we know...

...You have a Democratic state senator—who was involved in the attempts to redraw the district—running against you in the primary, along with another Democrat...

...One of the few Southern members of the Progressive Caucus, McKinney has earned 100 percent ratings from Americans for Democratic Action, the AFL-CIO...

...But are there instances when you have taken their causes to the floor of Congress and actually changed policies...

...When I look at my constituents and see etched in their faces the lines of struggle, I have no choice but to carry their fight up to Washington...

...Do you think that President Clinton has done enough to counter the Republican revolution...

...he said he couldn't believe that something like that was actually happening to women who wanted to farm...

...There they spend the day handing out literature, making telephone calls, and doing whatever they can to reelect a remarkable forty-one-year-old single mother who has battled mightily—and suffered dearly—to defend the interests of those beaten down by the Republican revolution...

...These people in Florida, who were Democrats, actually wrote in their brief that the Congressional Black Caucus was influencing U.S...

...Q: Dealing with people like Helms, watching them get the upper hand, has got to be frustrating...

...It allows us to get rid of these districts that lock some people out and lock other people in and make people feel that they have zero representation...

...McKinney: Oh God, yes...

...Q: You know President Clinton...

...He's probably a whole lot wilier than I am, but that does not legitimate his anachronistic ideas...

...Has the Democratic Party fought to protect the Congressional Black Caucus...

...Speaker Newt Gingrich," McKinney once referred in a House debate to the Republican Speaker as a "piglet...

...We had to change US...

...Q: Why has the attack on the Congressional Black Caucus come at this time...

...He didn't just dream about a Republican revolution...

...McKinney: Well, they certainly did in 1994...

...That sense of mission springs from the hopes and aspirations of my constituents...

...Q: You are one of the few people in the House who is actively pursuing the notion of changing the length of the work week, seeking to make it shorter in order to give people more time with their families and to open up more opportunities for the unemployed and underemployed...

...After the U.S...

...You've met with him a number of times...

...In fact, I think there are a lot of Democrats who would like to take more progressive positions...

...They actually wrote it down, so we have evidence that the folks behind some of these suits actually are doing what they are doing because they believe that the Congressional Black Caucus is too powerful...

...That was not one of Clinton's shinier moments...

...McKinney: If you're not going to embrace any other method of making sure that minorities have a seat at the public-policy-making table, then that's the only tool that's there right now...

...Q: If there are setbacks, should America consider alternatives for promoting fair representation of minorities...

...We provide relief for people who are suffering...

...Look at how the Democratic Party has responded to the concerns of African Americans...

...There's no way you can put yourself through the ritual and ordeal of a very, very tough campaign where nobody expects you to win, and all of the odds are against you, unless you have a sense of mission...

...But because I represent so much change, and such a different voice, that really had to be nipped in the bud...

...Cynthia McKinney grew up in the civil-rights movement, riding as a child on her parents' shoulders in protest marches...

...But you know what...

...They've never been able to vote for me, but they feel represented by me...

...You actually hear members of Congress referring to women who are on welfare as animals...

...Q: Even the Democratic Party in Georgia has failed to unite behind you...

...It was just like a few years ago, when the credit-card companies wouldn't give women credit cards...

...Has it fought to present platforms and programs that say to African Americans, "We respect the support you have given this Party...

...McKinney: Jeremy Rifkin has this book...

...Well, 6 percent unemployment is structurally very different for a country than 3 percent unemployment...

...We provide health care for people who are dying from environmental contamination...

...Q: While other people have backed off their defense of majority-minority districts, you've very bluntly stated that they are a positive part of the political process...

...I think he is beginning to reach people...

...And that's exactly what we've seen...

...And they've pumped them full of money...

...I've had my eye on Newt longer than most folks...

...And we immediately changed the way that the USDA operated...

...policy too much...

...It is such a serious problem for women that we have found that we've had to become specialists in child-support issues...

...I always say, because I didn't raise a lot of special-interest money for my campaigns, I came to Congress as "a free Representative"—I didn't have any special-interest ties except to the people who elected me...

...They said the two tangible results of the Congressional Black Caucus were the President's actions in Haiti to get rid of the dictators and the passage of the Crime Bill that had prevention money in it...

...We have become a country that expects that we will have, as a part of our society, a marginalized sub-group that is forced to exist in conditions that most Americans would find intolerable...

...The chairman of the subcommittee had never heard about this particular problem...

...I've been rough on him, and he's deserved it...

...McKinney: Not just my race, but also contests in other parts of Georgia and in North Carolina...

...In a contest between job creation and trickle-down, job creation wins every time...

...I think we've lost a lot of races because we've tried to be Pepsi to the Republicans' Coke, and people just didn't see the difference...

...when you represent people who sometimes don't even have running water in their homes, it is easy to become consumed with their mission because their mission has been neglected for generations...

...Q: It seems that, in the latest cycle of redistricting, you took even more hits than other members of the Caucus...

...McKinney: It was becoming too strong...

...McKinney: Well, it's a disaster...

...Do you believe there is a conscious assault on the Congressional Black Caucus at this point...

...I think that, somehow along the way, the economic powers that be decided that they were going to redefine what a full-employment economy was...

...He was able to take advantage of the frailties of the Democratic Party's stewardship of America...

...These people thought the prevention money was a complete waste that was forced on the country by the Congressional Black Caucus...

...We have redefined our public policy as regards economics so we not only tolerate an underclass, we expect that underclass...

...Maybe it was just a matter of him not understanding how badly the Republicans wanted the White House and the extent to which they would go in order to recapture it...

...Described by The Almanac of American Politics as "a fiery opponent of her Georgia neighbor...

...The End of Work, and what he has to say is absolutely fascinating...

...THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Cynthia McKinney 'Money can't buy votes, so at the end of the day, we're going to win.' BY JOHN NICHOLS On a hot Saturday in May, several dozen women, many of them poor, some of them welfare recipients, board a bus in South Georgia and travel for several hours until they reach the suburban Atlanta Congressional district where Cynthia McKinney is battling for her political life...

...For that thirty years, women were waiting to exhale...

...After it was all over, my campaign manager congratulated me on how well I had handled it...

...And I said, "I've been handling that all my life...

...King will be able to close his eyes in restful repose...

...With strong support from her constituents, as well as African Americans, women, and progressives from across Georgia, McKinney battled to keep her seat, which was 64 percent African American and overwhelmingly Democratic...

...I am consumed with their mission, but I know that there are members of this Congress who simply do not share that sense of duty...

...Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that states could eliminate majority-minority districts if they were deemed to constitute "racial gerrymandering," a federal judge ordered Georgia to redraw its district lines...

...McKinney: Oh yes, this is the struggle...

...And the way you get rid of the Caucus's power is, first, to take away its money and, second, to take away its members...

...It was outrageous...

...That sense of mission springs from the voices of my constituents...

...he orchestrated it...

...But, as she told The John Nichols, an editorial writer for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, covers electoral politics for The Progressive Washington Post, she lost that battle to "the holdovers from the Civil War days, the relics...

...Unfortunately, we still have a lot of people in America who feel like they have never had representation...

...Georgia then went without a woman in its delegation until 1993, when I was sworn in...

...it was unemployment at 6 percent...

...In 1992, she was the surprise winner of a Democratic primary for the seat representing Georgia's newly created Eleventh Congressional District...

...But an awful lot of Democrats—and most Republicans— can't say that...

...But we have to recognize how Newt Gingrich got in the position he's in...

...It shouldn't take me four years to get a clinic for people who are dying from cancer because of environmental contamination...

...Q: But what has the effect of that vision been on America...

...That we understand...

...Has it been with respect and inclusion...

...That's really pushing the whole economic debate into a new zone, isn't it...

...You can't get any closer to the struggle than the work that we do...

...But McKinney is fighting back, as she always has...

...Q: You've been a leader of the Progressive Caucus...

...That kind of threw him off balance...

...But the big problem is that a lot of Democrats aren't free, and the reason they aren't free is because they're weighted down by the need to raise money for their campaigns...

...African Americans have always known that a little bit of paranoia was healthy for us...

...Do you see your battles as part of a bigger struggle that has gone on for generations...

...McKinney: You'd have to be blind not to think that some folks were out to get us...

...McKinney: She ran into an inexperienced President...

...McKinney: When you have constituents whose kids are dropping out of high school at intolerable rates, and at the same time they themselves have difficulty reading and writing: when vou have constituents who are counting the deaths in their communities because they happen to live in environmentally contaminated areas...

...And then we have to tell people that, once you're at our table, we will listen to you...

...McKinney: I've got a state senator running against me, and I've got a candidate from the silk-stocking-Democrat crowd running against me...

...Q: In a new district, where a majority of the voters don't know you, and where the tradition has been to support white malelfe has to be tougher to campaign than in your old district...

...And it wasn't unemployment at 3 percent...

...But let me say this about him: Newt Gingrich is a visionary, and he's a doer, too...

...We should not hesitate to be inclusive, since the Republicans are so very exclusive...

...If, after this election, America's government still looks like America, then we can say "job well done," and I think Dr...

...McKinney: In Georgia, the first woman who was elected to Congress in her own right was elected in 1955 and she served until 1963...

...Q: It used to be considered beyond the pale to discuss cutting benefits for women and children...

...That's why I think that we need full public financing of campaigns...

...Now, unfortunately, with the Republicans taking over, a little paranoia is healthy for everybody...

...A fierce opponent of NAFTA, the death penalty, punitive welfare reform, and corporate-sponsored "tort reform," McKinney in her four years in the House has battled for deep cuts in military spending, for gun control, and for a host of environmental causes...

...As a native Georgian, what is your take on him...

...Then we had women approaching us about child-support cases...

...Well, Jesse Helms puts on his pants just like I do, and I don't think he is any brighter than I am...

...Q: You went to Congress as a single mom, as an activist, and as the first African-American woman ever to represent your state in Congress...

...McKinney: I think the Progressive Caucus is definitely where the Democrats can and should be...

...Would it be fair to say that, because you were a woman and an outspoken progressive, you were more of a target...

...McKinney: That's right...

...Already, the campaign for the July 9 primary has taken on a racial tinge, as her opponents have attempted to link her with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan...

...McKinney: That's absolutely correct...

...Q: While Guinier's ideas about providing greater representation are no different from those employed in many other nations around the world, President Clinton used them as an excuse to ditch her nomination for a place in his Administration...

...McKinney: Were I of the old mold but just of a darker hue, the punishment would not have been so bad...

...Q: But if we see the defeat of a number of African-American House members this year, then we have to acknowledge that eliminating some of these districts has made the Congress less representative, don't we...

...There are those who say that majority-minority districts are not needed anymore...

...Q: That fight has been uphill in the current Congress, hasn't it...

...These failures have been like a Chinese water torture-one at a time it's not so bad, but the cumulative effect is enough to drive you crazy...

...My campaign manager and I went up to one part of our district and three white men refused to shake my hand...

...In fact, the Democrats have been failing for quite some time on a state-by-state basis...

...McKinney: Well, it can be...

...Now you hear such proposals coming from the floor of Congress on a regular basis...

...When I listened to his ideas, I had to ask myself: Whatever happened to our discussion of a full-employment economy...

...When I got sworn in, women started showing up at my office to tell me that they had problems "of a personal nature...

...This is almost like a poll...

...That's nothing new...

...But I don't find it all that difficult...

...We provide a child-support check for mothers and babies who are poor and who are going without...

...I've been rough on him, and he's deserved it...

...As she prepared for a weekend of campaign stops in her sprawling new district, McKinney took time out to talk with me...

...Democrats lost it...

...Department of Agriculture [USDA] regulations for one woman...

...That's why I say this is like a poll...

...Almost immediately, a wealthy white lawyer and a white state senator entered the Democratic primary against McKinney...

...Before I was sworn in, they hadn't felt there was anyone they could come to, because they hadn't felt comfortable talking about what these men were doing to them...

...Gingrich didn't win it...

...McKinney: I think at first he was caught off guard and didn't understand how mean and vicious Washington, D.C, could be...

...In fact, the plaintiffs in the Florida suit seeking to strike down majority-minoritv districts actually wrote down what few Americans would say but I would suspect many in both parties were thinking...

...the League of Conservation Voters, and the Consumer Federation of America—a record few Northern Democrats can rival...

...But in terms of his being able to have a vision that was national in scope, and his being able to put together the pieces that are necessary to make that vision become a reality, that is very powerful and impressive...

...It shouldn't take so long to get things done that are right...

...This is the struggle...

...We will respond to your needs...

...It's just so sad, so hurtful...

...What should the Democratic Party's vision be in 1996...

...And we have to be the party of job creation...

...Jesse Helms got off on this "quota queen" business, and everybody was cowardly in the face of Jesse Helms...

...Well, that's for the ethics committee to decide...

...These are poor people who are coming from rural South Georgia because they don't want to lose their voice in Congress," says McKinney...