Cynthia McKinney.

On a hot Saturday in May, several dozen women, many of them poor, some of them welfare recipients, board a bus in South Georgia and travel for several hours until they reach the suburban Atlanta Congressional district where Cynthia McKinney is battling for her political life.

There they spend the day handing out literature, making telephone calls, and doing whatever they can to reelect a remarkable forty-one-year-old single mother who has battled mightily--and suffered dearly--to defend the interests of those beaten down by the Republican revolution.

The women on the bus aren't from McKinney's district, but they still view her as their standard bearer.

"They've never been able to vote for me, but they feel represented by me. These are poor people who are coming from rural South Georgia because they don't want to lose their voice in Congress," says McKinney.

Described by The Almanac of American Politics as "a fiery opponent of her Georgia neighbor, Speaker Newt Gingrich," McKinney once referred in a House debate to the Republican Speaker as a "piglet." Nor has she spared Democrats, criticizing them for viewing African Americans as "spare parts for their political ambitions."

A fierce opponent of NAFTA, the death penalty, punitive welfare reform, and corporate-sponsored "tort reform," McKinney in her four years in the House has battled for deep cuts in military spending, for gun control, and for a host of environmental causes.

One of the few Southern members of the Progressive Caucus, McKinney has earned 100 percent ratings from Americans for Democratic Action, the AFL-CIO, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Consumer Federation of America--a record few Northern Democrats can rival.

That record has earned her the antipathy not merely of Republicans but of Democratic "good old boys" who have never been particularly comfortable with strong African-American women, and who are genuinely troubled by one so progressive and so articulate as McKinney.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that states could eliminate majority-minority districts if they were deemed to constitute "racial gerrymandering," a federal judge ordered Georgia to redraw its district lines.

With strong support from her constituents, as well as African Americans, women, and progressives from across Georgia, McKinney battled to keep her seat, which was 64 percent African American and overwhelmingly Democratic. But, as she told The Washington Post, she lost that battle to "the holdovers from the Civil War days, the relics."

A three-judge panel drew a map that protected the likes of Gingrich but gave McKinney a mostly new district where only 30 percent of the voters are African Americans. Almost immediately, a wealthy white lawyer and a white state senator entered the Democratic primary against McKinney. Already, the campaign for the July 9 primary has taken on a racial tinge, as her opponents have attempted to link her with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

But McKinney is fighting back, as she always has.

Cynthia McKinney grew up in the civil-rights movement, riding as a child on her parents' shoulders in protest marches. Educated as a political scientist, she taught college until 1988, when she was elected to the Georgia House, where she served with her father, Billy McKinney.

In 1992, she was the surprise winner of a Democratic primary for the seat representing Georgia's newly created Eleventh Congressional District. She won handily in November and was reelected with 66 percent of the vote in 1994.

As she prepared for a weekend of campaign stops in her sprawling new district, McKinney took time out to talk with me.

Q: You went to Congress as a single mom, as an activist, and as the first African-American woman ever to represent your state in Congress. Did you go with a sense of mission?

McKinney: Absolutely. There's no way you can put yourself through the ritual and ordeal of a very, very tough campaign where nobody expects you to win, and all of the odds are against you, unless you have a sense of mission.

That sense of mission springs from the voices of my constituents. That sense of mission springs from the hopes and aspirations of my constituents. When I look at my constituents and see etched in their faces the lines of struggle, I have no choice but to carry their fight up to Washington.

Q: That fight has been uphill in the current Congress, hasn't it?

McKinney: When you have constituents whose kids are dropping out of high school at intolerable rates, and at the same time they themselves have difficulty reading and writing; when you have constituents who are counting the deaths in their communities because they happen to live in environmentally contaminated areas; when you represent people who sometimes don't even have running water in their homes, it is easy to become consumed with their mission because their mission has been neglected for generations.

I am consumed with their mission, but I know that there are members of this Congress who simply do not share that sense of duty. In the current Congress, there are too many members who would let the neglect continue.

It shouldn't take me four years to get a clinic for people who are dying from cancer because of environmental contamination. It shouldn't take so long to get things done that are right.

Q: You have made the condition of poor women and rural women a particular focus of your tenure. Is that because of a sense that these were the people who had been most neglected?

McKinney: In Georgia, the first woman who was elected to Congress in her own right was elected in 1955 and she served until 1963. Georgia then went without a woman in its delegation until 1993, when I was sworn in.

For that thirty years, women were waiting to exhale.

When I got sworn in, women started showing up at my office to tell me that they had problems "of a personal nature." That's how they would all say it--"of a personal nature"--but what they were really talking about was sexual harassment. Before I was sworn in, they hadn't felt there was anyone they could come to, because they hadn't felt comfortable talking about what these men were doing to them.

Then we had women approaching us about child-support cases. It is such a serious problem for women that we have found that we've had to become specialists in child-support issues.

Q: Much of the work you do on behalf of poor and working-class women is on an individual, case-by-case basis. But are there instances when you have taken their causes to the floor of Congress and actually changed policies?

McKinney: Oh God, yes. We had to change US. Department of Agriculture [USDA] regulations for one woman. This woman had managed her husband's farm for seven years, but when she applied to get funding so that she could start her own farm, they said that she didn't have any experience. It was just like a few years ago, when the credit-card companies wouldn't give women credit cards. It was outrageous.

So we brought her case up before the House Agriculture Committee and had the regulations changed right then and there. The chairman of the subcommittee had never heard about this particular problem; he said he couldn't believe that something like that was actually happening to women who wanted to farm. And we immediately changed the way that the USDA operated.

Q: Those victories have been harder to come by in a Congress where the agenda is set by Newt Gingrich. As a native Georgian, what is your take on him?

McKinney: I guess you could probably say I've had my eye on Newt longer than most folks. I've been rough on him, and he's deserved it.

But let me say this about him: Newt Gingrich is a visionary, and he's a doer, too. He didn't just dream about a Republican revolution; he orchestrated it.

Now, was he smart enough to avoid doing unethical or perhaps illegal things along the way? Well, that's for the ethics committee to decide.

But in terms of his being able to have a vision that was national in scope, and his being able to put together the pieces that are necessary to make that vision become a reality, that is very powerful and impressive.

Q: But what has the effect of that vision been on America?

McKinney: Well, it's a disaster. But we have to recognize how Newt Gingrich got in the position he's in. He was able to take advantage of the frailties of the Democratic Party's stewardship of America.

Q: Have the Democrats failed to present a vision for America?

McKinney: Well, they certainly did in 1994. In fact, the Democrats have been failing for quite some time on a state-by-state basis. These failures have been like a Chinese water torture--one at a time it's not so bad, but the cumulative effect is enough to drive you crazy.

Look at how the Democratic Party has responded to the concerns of African Americans. Has it been with respect and inclusion? Has the Democratic Party fought to protect the Congressional Black Caucus? Has it fought to present platforms and programs that say to African Americans, "We respect the support you have given this Party."

The failures of the Democrats to put up good candidates, to run effective races, to build a genuine grassroots organization have accumulated, and Gingrich was able to recognize that and take advantage of it.

Gingrich didn't win it, Democrats lost it. I think we've lost a lot of races because we've tried to be Pepsi to the Republicans' Coke, and people just didn't see the difference.

Q: You note that Gingrich gave the Republicans a vision. What should the Democratic Party's vision be in 1996?

McKinney: With the hate-laden public policy that we are witnessing in Washington, one of the messages of the Democratic Party ought to be that there's room for everybody at our table. Everybody is welcome here. We should not hesitate to be inclusive, since the Republicans are so very exclusive.

And then we have to tell people that, once you're at our table, we will listen to you. We will respond to your needs.

And we have to be the party of job creation. In a contest between job creation and trickle-down, job creation wins every time.

Q: You've been a leader of the Progressive Caucus. Do you see its positions as being closer to what the Democratic Party ought to be offering voters?

McKinney: I think the Progressive Caucus is definitely where the Democrats can and should be. In fact, I think there are a lot of Democrats who would like to take more progressive positions.

But the big problem is that a lot of Democrats aren't free, and the reason they aren't free is because they're weighted down by the need to raise money for their campaigns. I always say, because I didn't raise a lot of special-interest money for my campaigns, I came to Congress as "a free Representative"--I didn't have any special-interest ties except to the people who elected me.

But an awful lot of Democrats--and most Republicans--can't say that. That's why I think that we need full public financing of campaigns.

Q: You are one of the few people in the House who is actively pursuing the notion of changing the length of the work week, seeking to make it shorter in order to give people more time with their families and to open up more opportunities for the unemployed and underemployed. That's really pushing the whole economic debate into a new zone, isn't it?

McKinney: Jeremy Rifkin has this book, The End of Work, and what he has to say is absolutely fascinating. When I listened to his ideas, I had to ask myself: Whatever happened to our discussion of a full-employment economy? I think that, somehow along the way, the economic powers that be decided that they were going to redefine what a full-employment economy was. And it wasn't unemployment at 3 percent; it was unemployment at 6 percent.

Well, 6 percent unemployment is structurally very different for a country than 3 percent unemployment. And then, in terms of policy, if you say that 6 percent unemployment is acceptable, then you open the door for more conservative economists to say that 7, 8, even 10 percent unemployment is acceptable.

We have redefined our public policy as regards economics so we not only tolerate an underclass, we expect that underclass. We have become a country that expects that we will have, as a part of our society, a marginalized sub-group that is forced to exist in conditions that most Americans would find intolerable.

Q: It used to be considered beyond the pale to discuss cutting benefits for women and children. Now you hear such proposals coming from the floor of Congress on a regular basis.

McKinney: That's absolutely. correct. You actually hear members of Congress referring to women who are on welfare as animals. It's as if hate reigns supreme. It's just so sad, so hurtful. And the tragedy is that there are still not enough voices being raised to say, "This hatred of the poor, of the women and the children, this is what is truly un-American."

Q: You know President Clinton. You've met with him a number of times. Do you think that President Clinton has done enough to counter the Republican revolution?

McKinney: I think at first he was caught off guard and didn't understand how mean and vicious Washington, D.C., could be. Maybe it was just a matter of him not understanding how badly the Republicans wanted the White House and the extent to which they would go in order to recapture it. That kind of threw him off balance. Now, I think, he's found some footing. I think he is beginning to reach people.

Q: When the Republicans got control of Congress, they cut the funding for the Congressional Black Caucus. Then there were the court decisions undermining the majority-minority districts from which many members of the Caucus have been elected. Do you believe there is a conscious assault on the Congressional Black Caucus at this point?

McKinney: You'd have to be blind not to think that some folks were out to get us. That we know. That we understand. African Americans have always known that a little bit of paranoia was healthy for us.

Now, unfortunately, with the Republicans taking over, a little paranoia is healthy for everybody.

Q: Why has the attack on the Congressional Black Caucus come at this time?

McKinney: It was becoming too strong. In fact, the plaintiffs in the Florida suit seeking to strike down majority-minority districts actually wrote down what few Americans would say but I would suspect many in both parties were thinking.

These people in Florida, who were Democrats, actually wrote in their brief that the Congressional Black Caucus was influencing U.S. policy too much. They said the two tangible results of the Congressional Black Caucus were the President's actions in Haiti to get rid of the dictators and the passage of the Crime Bill that had prevention money in it. These people thought the prevention money was a complete waste that was forced on the country by the Congressional Black Caucus.

They actually wrote it down, so we have evidence that the folks behind some of these suits actually are doing what they are doing because they believe that the Congressional Black Caucus is too powerful. And the way you get rid of the Caucus's power is, first, to take away its money and, second, to take away its members. And that's exactly what we've seen.

Q: It seems that, in the latest cycle of redistricting, you took even more hits than other members of the Caucus. Would it be fair to say that, because you were a woman and an outspoken progressive, you were more of a target?

McKinney: Were I of the old mold but just of a darker hue, the punishment would not have been so bad. But because I represent so much change, and such a different voice, that really had to be nipped in the bud.

Q: Even the Democratic Party in Georgia has failed to unite behind you. You have a Democratic state senator--who was involved in the attempts to redraw the district--running against you in the primary, along with another Democrat.

McKinney: I've got a state senator running against me, and I've got a candidate from the silk-stocking-Democrat crowd running against me. And they've pumped them full of money. But you, know what? Money can't buy votes. So at the end of the day, we're going to win.

Q: In a new district, where a majority of the voters don't know you, and where the tradition has been to support white males, it has to be tougher to campaign than in your old district.

McKinney: Well, it can be. But I don't find it all that difficult. My campaign manager and I went up to one part of our district, and three white men refused to shake my hand. They fussed at my campaign manager, who is a white male, because he was with me.

After it was all over, my campaign manager congratulated me on how well I had handled it. And I said, "I've been handling that all my life. That's nothing new."

Q: While other people have backed off their defense of majority-minority districts, you've very bluntly stated that they are a positive part of the political process.

McKinney: If you're not going to embrace any other method of making sure that minorities have a seat at the public-policy-making table, then that's the only tool that's there right now.

There are those who say that majority-minority districts are not needed anymore. But I would hasten to say that when Representative Cleo Fields ran for governor of Louisiana in 1995, we saw evidence that even the staunchest of white Democrats turn Republican when the Democratic nominee is black.

Q: Your race, in a 70 percent white district, will be a real test, won't it?

McKinney: Not just my race, but also contests in other parts of Georgia and in North Carolina. This is almost like a poll. We can take through this election a snapshot of where America is in the absence of minority districts.

If, after this election, America's government still looks like America, then we can say "job well done," and I think Dr. King will be able to close his eyes in restful repose.

Q: But if we see the defeat of a number of African-American House members this year, then we have to acknowledge that eliminating some of these districts has made the Congress less representative, don't we?

McKinney: That's right. That's why I say this is like a poll.

Q: If there are setbacks, should America consider alternatives for promoting fair representation of minorities? You've embraced Lani Guinier's proposal that America should look at creating multi-member Congressional districts, which would virtually assure minority groups better access to representation.

McKinney: With multi-member districts, you really could get rid of race to the extent that we can get rid of it as an issue. It allows us to get rid of these districts that lock some people out and lock other people in and make people feel that they have zero representation. Unfortunately, we still have a lot of people in America who feel like they have never had representation.

Q: While Guinier's ideas about providing greater representation are no different from those employed in many other nations around the world, President Clinton used them as an excuse to ditch her nomination for a place in his Administration.

McKinney: She ran into an inexperienced President. That was not one of Clinton's shinier moments. Jesse Helms got off on this "quota queen" business, and everybody was cowardly in the face of Jesse Helms. Well, Jesse Helms puts on his pants just like I do, and I don't think he is any brighter than I am. He's probably a whole lot wilier than I am, but that does not legitimate his anachronistic ideas.

Q: Dealing with people like Helms, watching them get the upper hand, has got to be frustrating. Do you see your battles as part of a bigger struggle that has gone on for generations?

McKinney: Oh yes, this is the struggle. You can't get any closer to the struggle than the work that we do. We provide water for people who don't have running water in their homes.

We provide health care for people who are dying from environmental contamination.

We provide relief for people who are suffering.

We provide a child-support check for mothers and babies who are poor and who are going without.

This is the struggle.