The True Story of Fox’s Hero, Kenneth Gladney

Did you hear about the town hall meeting in St. Louis where union thugs attacked a black conservative and sent him to the hospital with multiple injuries?

Well, it didn’t happen exactly like that. In fact, events were the opposite of what talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly broadcast and what corporate media carried across the US.

The right wing Tea Party group announced to the world that their supporter, Kenneth Gladney, was assaulted by Elston McCowan, who is an organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Earlier this year I worked closely with McCowan, a black minister, when he ran for mayor of St. Louis on the Green Party ticket. Since nothing that I heard fit the McCowan I know, I interviewed him about the August 6 incident.

“I was one of 6 or 7 SEIU members and staff who went to the meeting on aging that Rep. Russ Carnahan (D. St. Louis) held,” McCowan told me. “When the forum started, the Tea Party people started yelling that they wanted to talk about Obama’s health care proposal. So we told them to stop shouting because we could all ask questions after the speakers.”

“Then the Carnahan folks then said that you could only ask a question if you had written it on one of their forms. But they hadn’t given any of the forms to either Tea Party or SEIU. So both groups left the meeting in a bad mood.”

Walking outside, McCowan saw Gladney selling buttons of Obama in blackface and Obama smoking weed. Feeling insulted, and as as he pointed to one of the buttons. McCowan asked why a black man would be hawking material denigrating the first black president.

“When I pointed at the button, Gladney slapped my hand. So I told him not to hit me and pointed at it again and repeated my question. He smacked my hand even harder, hit me several times and pushed me down.

“As I went down, I grabbed him by reflex to break my fall. I hit my shoulder and something popped. I lost consciousness for a moment but soon realized that Gladney continued to hit me.

“Another SEIU guy, Perry Molens, came over and told Gladney, ‘He’s a minister and won’t fight back. He can’t see out of one eye. Stop hitting him!’ When Gladney kept on, Perry tried to get him off of me and threw a punch in the process.

“I don’t know why Gladney had an attorney on hand, but his attorney came over yelling ‘You two attacked him!’ Gladney went off to find cops and told them to arrest us. The cops wouldn’t listen to us and did what the Tea Party people told them to do. They arrested me, Perry, a newspaper reporter and three supporters of health care reform.”

The account you just read did not appear in St. Louis media or national reports that picked up the story and certainly was not addressed on right wing talk shows or web sites. They all presented Kenneth Gladney’s story that he was peacefully selling buttons when a half dozen union thugs jumped him. They claimed that he had to be taken to St. John’s Mercy Medical Center for “injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face.”

Close examination hardly backs up this bizarre criminalization of the victim. Adam, a St. Louis activist, posted a frame by frame analysis of the U-tube video seen across the country which is available at: http://stlactivisthub.blogspot.com/2009/08/questioning-right-wing-story-on-last.html

The video shows a large black man, who is McCowan, on the ground. Gladney claimed that four people attacked him, but the U-tube video shows only one person (McCowan) grabbing him as he was falling. It shows Gladney getting up unobstructed, which contradicts his claim of being attacked. It is especially hard to believe that McCowan hit him while McCowan lay on the ground.

In one interview, Gladney claimed that McCowan hit him in the face. Yet, the video has Gladney asking McCowan “Why did you hit my hands?” That’s an odd question for someone struck in the face.

Another video clip shows a person in an SEIU shirt standing over McCowan to protect him, which also is not consistent with Gladney’s story. The video records Gladney saying “I’m gonna beat the shit outta him,” and shows a Tea Party person holding him back as his fists are clenched.

Despite evidence that Gladney was doing fine, he had an ambulance to take him to the hospital. Tea Party transformed Gladney into a brutalized hero as they picketed SEIU headquarters two days later. The front page of the August 9 /St. Louis Post-Dispatch/ carried a photo of Gladney in a wheelchair surrounded by adoring Tea Partiers in front of the SEIU office.

The photo is interesting because the only hint of any injury is a bandage on Gladney’s knee. Whatever damage he suffered to his face and elbows was miraculously healed in less than 48 hours. It is also interesting that a person being pushed around in a wheelchair is the same person who appears on U-tube throwing punches, jumping up and getting cops to arrest union members.

Elston McCowan’s injuries are real. His shoulder was dislocated and his shoulder bone is chipped. He is perfectly willing to make his hospital records of August 6 made public. Would Kenneth Gladney also be willing to make his hospital records public so we could all verify the severity of injuries he sustained to his face, elbows and back? Or were they just a publicity gimmick to get on the Rush Limbaugh show?

Of course, it’s the issue behind the issue that’s most important. Why is there such intense hostility to health care reform? And why now? Why do hundreds of people contort their faces into pure hatred at the idea of medical care for those with low and moderate income?

On the surface, it seems like a hatred for “socialism” or for a government providing anything for its people. Disdain for government programs can’t be the only reason, since half of Tea Party supporters at some meetings receive Medicare

A lot of it is simmering hatred of having a black president, with white racists lying in wait for what they perceive as a trigger to let them fire. The St. Louis episode shows that there is nothing that white racists love more than a black person doing their dirty work for them.

Part of the hate certainly stems from the fantastic stories being spread that the Obama health care plan would give free health care to immigrants with brown skin and euthanasia to elderly whites. Many are oblivious to the fact that the plan would actually do very little except prop up the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Nevertheless, the insurance industry is behind the hate campaign. and glues the other sources of hostility together. Several themes run through the frenzy of anti-health care reform across the US. These themes are all too familiar in our history:

* Business (in this case the health insurance industry) stirs up hysteria over mythical disasters that could unfold if there is reform;

* Business interests prey upon underlying ethnic hostility (such as resentment over a black man in the White House);

* The right relies on the police and/or military to support them;

* The corporate press extols the virtue of the police in defending the public order;

* Supposed progressive politicians cave into the right (i.e., After the August 6 attack, the “liberal” University City neighbor of St. Louis cancelled a town hall meeting);

This cluster of events surrounding the Tea Party upsurge is reminiscent of anti-labor mobilizations throughout the history of union organizing. St. Louis activists know how parallel the scenario was on a far grander scale following the great General Strike of 1877.

After the fray in St. Louis, Democrat Russ Carnahan placed equal blame on “both sides,” indicating he has no intention of holding Tea Party accountable for Gladney’s actions. Part of the reason that Tea Party is so brazen is that the highest leaders of the Democratic Party will have doctors and nurses arrested for daring to speak on behalf of meaningful health reform.

Now is not the time to retreat on health care. If few progressives turn out at town hall meetings it is because Democratic Party proposals are so tepid, so boring and so protective of corporate profits.

If we had bold proposals to guarantee every person decent medical care – otherwise known as single payer health care or socialized medicine – many, many people would be excited and show up at public meetings. If they found themselves in a sea of people demanding meaningful change, the right wing hate groups would become nothing more than a tempest in a tea pot.

DON FITZ is Editor of /Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought/ which is published for members of the Green Party USA. He can be reached at fitzdon@aol.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don Fitz  is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought where a version of this article first appeared. He was the 2016 candidate of the Missouri Green Party for Governor. He is author of Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution. He can be reached at: fitzdon@aol.com.