below...It Don't Mean a Thing...

At the Democratic Convention on Wednesday Al Gore honored the memories of two 1998 hate crime victims, Matthew Shepherd, the gay man from Wyoming, Mr. Cheney's "home" state, who was beaten to death while tied to a fence, and James Byrd, Jr., the black man from Texas who was dragged to death from a chain behind a pick-up truck. Dennis and Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepherd's parents, and Renee Byrd Mullins, James Byrd, Jr.'s daughter, were members of a panel devoted to crime and victim's rights, an issue that Gore promises to focus on if he becomes president.

Shepherd and Byrd have been linked together as victims of hate crimes ever since their killings. In April of this year, Shepherd and Byrd survivors met at the Millenium March on Washington for Equality, a civil-rights demonstration. But one year earlier, Renee Byrd Mullins observed first-hand that the well-publicized talk of Governor George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is a sham, a political play on words that has little meaning in the real world of Bush politics.

At the time of her ten-minute meeting with Bush in the solemnity of the Governor's Office in the Texas State Capitol, Mullins had come to Austin to lobby for a hate crimes bill that had been proposed by a Democratic legislator. Although the bill had passed the Dem House, Mullins had the opportunity to visit with Bush prior to a vote in the Republican Senate. Texas had a vague, toothless hate crimes law passed by a previous Democratic legislature and signed into law by Bush's Democratic predecessor, and Bush was determined that if he couldn't eliminate it, at least he could prevent if from being strengthened. First, the Governor let it be known in the Senate that he did not want the bill to reach his desk. (Republican senators who had previously voted for hate crimes legislation were told that the Governor wanted a "no" vote.) Then Bush did what he often does in such instances, he told the press that since the matter is being considered by the legislature, in order to be fair he would not comment upon it until it reached his desk. Given Bush's willingness to get behind bills that benefit his corporate friends, it's clear that his "fairness" is as selective as his "compassion."

Bush wanted to kill the proposed hate crimes bill, which was more specific about penalities as well as groups covered, such as homosexuals. First, he thought of the bill as affirmative action legislation, and he was on record as being against affirmative action bills. Secondly, for the first time a proposed bill of its kind specifically included gays, and his Christian Coalition backers were against that. Looking ahead to his run for president, it made good political sense to Bush not to rile his limited number of African-American backers by reminding them of his position on affirmative action. Later, after the bill was killed by the Senate, it became convenient to have his spokesmen in the Lege report that the bill would have passed if not for the inclusion of homosexuals in its language. This was a calculated, convenient excuse. Remember, though, when Byrd's daughter visited Bush, the Senate had not had its way with the hate crimes bill passed by the Dem House, and Bush was anxious to get it killed.

A pregnant Renee Byrd Mullins was able to get a short meeting with Bush through the help of Texas Rep. Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston), who accompanied her to the meeting. Later, the specifics of the meeting were reported by Mullins to Newsday columnist Marie Cocco, whose story of the meeting was published in the Austin American-Statesman on 2/14/00. "It didn't feel [like] a good greeting I had a very short handshake. In his essence, he was saying, 'OK, tell me what you want and get out.'... He's a very hard person. He had a wall built up before I even got in there."

Bush told Mullins that he hadn't looked at the hate crimes bill but "he said he would look at it when it came out of the Senate." Here, Cocco adds that Mullins already knew that Bush had instructed the Republican Senate to vote the bill down. At that point, "Mullins took out her own copy of the legislation. She placed it on a table in front of Bush. He didn't pick it up. She recounted her father's death, asked Bush if she were a homosexual, would she deserve to die?" She began to cry.

"The Governor did not offer a glass of water. Or a Kleenex. [Rep. Thompson] said she waited to see what Bush would do. Then she dug out an exra tissue and walked across the room to offer it to Mullins. Bush offered Mullins and her family his condolences." While Bush has attended a funeral service for white victims of a Fort Worth hate crime, he did not attend the funeral service for James Byrd, Jr., nor did he visit the family at any time. He claims he called the family once, but the family says it never received any such call.

At the end of the Cocco story, the columnist points to Bush's behavior as a failure of leadership: "Bush runs on his record of leadership in Texas, saying it shows the world he would serve the nation well. Mullin's story is about how Bush showed leadership at that instant when the eyes of the world were upon him, but really could not see." We see Bush's behavior differently. While the idea of hate crimes legislation is open to debate, hate crimes is not what this story is about. It's about the maturity of a politician and it happened last year, not when he was "young and foolish." In his callous treatment of Renee Byrd Mullins, Bush showed the world that votes are more important to him than people. While he talks "compassion" in front of the camera, in the privacy of his own office he is anything but compassionate. --Politex, 8/16/00