The hard right US Chamber of Commerce is among the principal lobbying and propaganda tentacles of America's corporate ruling class. Among much else, it emphatically denies the existence of man-made climate change and is enthusiastically in favor of privatizing almost everything from education to social security to roads and public transit. Thousands have graduated from its lavishly funded “leadership programs”, including an unknown number of black elected officials. How do the Chamber's leadership grads behave in office? Take a look at suburban Atlanta's Clayton County, where two Chamber of Commerce grads serve on the county's five member board.

Is the US Chamber of Commerce Training Black Elected Officials?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

It was no big surprise last fall when Clayton County GA admitted it had underfunded its public transit bus service, C-TRAN by more than a million dollars. But the response of the county's elected commissioners, four out of five of them African American, was shocking indeed. Rather than follow the advice of their chairman Eldrin Bell, and pass a one cent sales tax to join MARTA, the agency that operates Atlanta's bus and rail transit systems, the commissioners voted to simply close the C-TRAN garage and strand the thousands of riders who depend on public transit to get to work, to school, to medical care and to shop.

Clayton County is a chunk of south suburban Atlanta with 290,000 people and a new black majority. While poverty rates in U.S. suburbs have steadily climbed in recent years to the point where there are actually more poor people in the burbs than in central cities, poverty in suburban Atlanta has grown faster than almost anywhere. The policies of Atlanta's black elite, which have eliminated nearly all the city's public housing, even its senior citizen buildings, are widely thought to be contributing factors in the swelling numbers of poor in the city's suburbs.

With its new black majority and its burgeoning growth in poverty, Clayton County is the scene of multiple crises provoked by its business class leadership in order to privatize its schools, transit, and other public sector resources. Since privatization is just as hugely unpopular in Georgia as everywhere else, it's an agenda which must be pursued while not mentioning its name. Hence, over the last three years Atlanta TV newscasts have carried more than a hundred stories on the imminent shutdown of Clayton's public schools, while never mentioning the high-stakes testing regime mandated by No Child Left Behind as the cause of the shutdowns, and only hinting at what might take the place of a closed county public school system.

Georgia's level of public transit funding is among the lowest in the U.S. When majority black Fulton and Dekalb counties combined with the city of Atlanta to form MARTA three decades ago, none of the surrounding majority white counties would have anything to do with it. In Atlanta just as everywhere else in the U.S., public transit is assumed to be a black thing, and black transit riders are presumed to bring a crime wave to the burbs along with them. Now that Clayton is majority black, its objections to cooperating with Atlanta, Fulton and Dekalb have dissolved. Except for Clayton's elected commissioners, most of whom again, are black.

This month the commissioners voted to hand over the assets of the county's C-TRAN bus service to GRTA, a state agency which will use them only to provide express service to the airport and downtown Atlanta, not to work, schools, medical care or shopping destinations within Clayton County. Adding insult to injury, the commissioners who couldn't find $1.3 million to keep C-TRAN running voted to pay GRTA $2.4 million right away to operate three of the new express routes to Atlanta. At the last meeting before stranding tens of thousands of their transit-dependent neighbors, Clayton County residents heaped scorn upon their elected officials.

"If we can spend $45 million on roads for the rich, why can’t we spend $6 million for the poor?" asked the board’s chairman, Eldrin Bell, who insisted that if his fellow commissioners really wanted to fund C-Tran, they could find a way in the budget. "We’re just simply refusing to do it."

The unasked and unanswered question is how did local elected officials, in this case nominal Democrats and mostly black, become so radically insensitive to the needs of their constituents? Part of the answer lies in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and its local affiliate in Clayton County which runs a “leadership training” program for local elected officials it calls “Leadership Clayton.” Two of the commissioners, Ralph Edmundson and Wole Ralph, are graduates of the Chamber of Commerce's leadership program, one of hundreds throughout the country funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The hard right wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the lobbying and propaganda arm of big business nationwide. Last year the Chamber spent more on media in the presidential election than either the national Republican or Democratic parties. Most of what they spent was on Republican candidates and causes favored by Republicans. The Chamber provides a network through which to funnel campaign contributions from big business to its favored officials, as well as conducting helpful “research” and authoring ready-to-pass legislation for them. If Clayton County is any barometer, the Chamber of Commerce may have “trained” more black elected officials than anyplace else we can name. Can any sensible person wonder why there is a crisis in black leadership, when our leaders serve the interests of wealthy corporations over their human constituents?

Clayton County residents are not standing idle. They vote on election day. They write letters to editors. They show up in big numbers at every public meeting, and make their wishes known. Apparently that's not enough. So some have taken to direct action. Clayton residents belonging to the Atlanta Public Sector Alliance have targeted the county commissioners and vowed to highlight their ties with the Chamber of Commerce.

Last Sunday morning several dozen showed up outside the home church of one county commissioner dressed in black to inform the pastor and congregation of the hardship that will be inflicted on Clayton residents by the end of public transit service to most of the county. On Tuesday of the same week, protesters appeared at the office of the Clayton County Chamber of Commerce demanding that the Chamber endorse the continuation of C-TRAN bus service for all county residents, not just the few who'd like a faster commute to downtown Atlanta.

One was Diane Reynolds, property manager at an independent living facility in Clayton County. Unlike the large businesses that might benefit from privatization, hers was one that might have to leave the county if public transit and paratransit service was ended or even cut back. “The first thing people want to know,” she told BAR, “if they're considering our apartments is whether we're on a bus line, and how often it runs. We do provide a weekly shuttle, but many of our residents depend on the bus to take care of their business. If C-TRAN goes, we may have to leave too.”

Later this week the Atlanta Public Sector Alliance will visit the Atlanta workplace of another county commissioner, Wole Ralph, who was “trained” by the Chamber of Commerce and is a vocal advocate of shutting down public transit and handing over the assets to GRTA, many of whose board members are enthusiastic advocates of transit privatization. “Clayton county residents have been to all the meetings, have met with all the officials, and they're not afraid to do it again,” said Terence Courtney, an organizer with the Public Sector Alliance. “But so far, that hasn't been enough. We have to take it to another level. And we will.”

Contact the Atlanta Public Sector Alliance at 404-401-8817, or through terencecourtney(at)yahoo.com.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report.  Contact him at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.