Taken for Granted by Gianno Caldwell

Author:Gianno Caldwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2019-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

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I FIRST ENCOUNTERED this kind of unlikely teamwork when I started working at the Illinois State Capitol. I lobbied the legislature, government officials, and consultants of all stripes and both parties. It was there that, for the first time, I began to be accepted by black people as a Republican.

Malcolm Weems, a ranking Democrat and a respected chief of staff for the governor’s budget office, was one of the first black senior bureaucrats who took me seriously. He pulled me aside shortly after I arrived in Springfield. “Listen,” he said. “I know you’re a Republican, but at the end of the day, you’re one of us. You actually care about the black community. I know because of what others have said and what I have observed. We got you.”

He didn’t care one iota that I was a Republican. Rather, he saw it as an advantage, because I’d become the black community’s representative in the GOP. It was exactly the kind of opportunity I’d been hoping for. Weems and others understood that I had a voice inside the other team and could maybe help people on both sides see things differently. He understood that we might do some good together. It was great to have someone like him advocate for me.

If you’re thinking I see how it is; you guys have this little club together…well, you’re right. Only 12 percent of the country is African American. We know that to get anything done, you sometimes need to sit down with the “enemy” and sort things out. The fact that nearly 40 percent of prison inmates are black men and that 40 percent of black children live in poverty only makes bipartisan efforts all the more important.

Such camaraderie continued when I arrived in D.C. I quickly learned that people on both sides of the aisle were working to cut deals and sometimes to help our bosses see the bigger picture and put politics and posturing aside. Bipartisanship is rare in D.C., but it does exist.

The bigger picture, it may surprise you, is actually remarkably clear.

Here are some specific plank points and goals declared at the national party convention in 2016:

Raising workers’ wages and supporting working families

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