In February, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), then the chairwoman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, wrote an impassioned letter to National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell expressing her disappointment with the league’s stance on the racist name of Washington, D.C.’s NFL team, which stands by its franchise brand, the Redskins. “For you to pretend that the name is defensible based on decade-old public opinion polling flies in the face of our constitutionally protected government-to-government relationship with tribes,” she wrote. Rightfully, Democrats from Cantwell on up to President Barack Obama have joined in the condemnation of the team owners’ refusal to give up the offensive name. In her letter, Cantwell letter excoriated Goodell: “It is not appropriate for this multibillion dollar 501(c)(6) tax-exempt organization to perpetuate and profit from the continued degradation of tribes and Indian people.” Yet there is another large organization that profits from a legacy inextricably linked to the “degradation of tribes”--the Democratic Party. On May 30, Cantwell will headline the Indiana Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.Get the Story:
Ari Rabin-Havt: Time for Democrats to Stop Celebrating Andrew Jackson (The American Prospect 5/2) Also Today:
A civic dream: Cherokee Nation in Ga. was another kind of “City on a Hill” (The Saporta Report 4/28)
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