Brother In Struggle:
Last Sunday I caught you on Like It Is with Gil Noble. I have always enjoyed listening to you. Of late however I have been sorely disappointed in your commentary as it regards Barack Obama's presidential bid. We are all entitled to our opinion and I respect that we who are looking out for the best interests of African people may have a difference of opinion on Obama's run for and probable presidency. However; it saddens me to see you of all people to stoop so low as to name call and categorically dismiss other people of differing opinion for the simple reason that they have a different opinion. You expounded on this difference of opinion in a most unsavory manner in a piece that picked up on the Assault on Black Folk Sanity website, which has prompted me to write this response.
But I’m talking about another substantial pimple of soi disant, dare I say, intellectuals & self advertised radicals who are quite audible & wordy in opposition to Obama.
So I could understand getting at people who call themselves black conservatives. I could even fathom the bile spit at Hillary Clinton supporters, but "pimple"? for having the audacity to critique brother Obama?
You might say, ‘but how is that, since now there is only the prisoner of war, McCain, who proves every time he opens his mouth that he is still a prisoner of the Vietnam war’ that Obama faces. McCain’s major campaign plank is that Americans need to keep dying in Iraq and our tax monies need to keep being fed to Halliburton and the other oilies and cronies. McCain also holds that we continue the Bush type savaging of the US constitution by denying habeas corpus and the legal rights of prisoners in Guantanamo. Keep it open as a Bush-Cheney concentration camp. McCain also wants to maintain the widespread hatred of the US by the world, as well as making Bush giveaway tax cuts for the super rich permanent.
Here’s a charming character who on returning from Vietnam soon dumped his lst wife who had been severely crippled in an automobile accident, to run off with, among others, a beer brewery heiress who cd support his political barn storming. Here’s a man, who for all the media clap about him being “an independent” is the spiritual follower of the man whose seat he sits in as Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater.
I mention all this because it is criminal for these people claiming to be radical or intellectual to oppose or refuse to support Obama. I hope we don’t have to hear about “the lesser of two evils” from people whose foolish mirror worship wd have us elect the worst of two evils.
Who said anything about McCain? I don't know of any person critical of Obama who is pro-McCain so why even bring him up? Well since you did bring him up, lets compare records for a second. Obama started out with the "I didn't agree with the war in the first place" position. A position shared with Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. The aforementioned also were critical of Haliburton, etc. Tell me Mr. Baraka how much time (and money) did you spend supporting these individuals? I contributed cash money to the McKinney campaign. Did you? I devoted space on my blog to supporting AND critiquing her re-election campaign and you did what exactly? But let me not get into a pissing contest here and get back to McCain and Obama. Obama went from "remove the troops now" to "16 months" or whatever the "commanders on the ground" think is best. McCain went from 100 years to about the same thing. In either case the current PM of Iraq wants a withdrawal within 2 years so it doesn't really matter what either candidates have to say on the subject. But McCain and Obama have something more relevant in commmon, they have both repeatedly voted to continue funding this war. I find it odd how someone who is opposed to the war in Iraq would vote to keep sending money into that hole. I suppose that piece of contradiction doesn't bother you much.
Secondly, while you focus on the issue of Habeus Corpus in Guantanamo, I would remind you that Obama did a very significant and public about face on his opposition to the immunity for telecoms who BROKE THE LAW! Should I assume that the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution doesn't mean much to you? After all, if the government doesn't need a warrant then exactly what's the point of habeus corpus? Please, do tell.
Mirror worshipers would have "us" elect the worst of two evils? See that's some Democratic party line talk right there. That's up there with the 'Nader cost us the 2000 election" dumb talk. It's sad to see you have fallen for that line. In 2000 all that had to happen was for Gore to win his home state (like every other winning president has done to my knowledge). Had he done that, we wouldn't even be talking about Florida. Secondly why is it that the Democrats and Republicans (whom you admitted were two sides of the same coin) have been able to keep a monopoly on power? Where are the third and forth parties that could radically change how power is wielded in government. In any event, it won't be the "radicals" that will be electing any of the evil since it is clear that "intellectual radicals" are but a small minority in the US and really don't determine US electoral outcomes.
For those who claim radical by supporting McKinney or, brain forbid, the Nadir of fake liberalism, we shd have little sympathy. As much as I have admired Cynthia McKinney, to pose her candidacy as an alternative to Obama is at best empty idealism, at worst nearly as dangerous as when the Nader used the same windy egotism to help elect Bush.
The people who are supporting McKinney must know that that is an empty gesture. But too often such people are so pocked with self congratulatory idealism, that they care little or understand little about politics (i.e. the gaining maintaining and use of power) but want only to pronounce, to themselves mostly, how progressive or radical or even revolutionary they are.
No, I don't know of anyone who is posing McKinney as an alternative to Obama. Rather, I believe that those supporting McKinney are doing so because she supports their positions and policies. They are voting their policy interests. They know full well that McKinney is not going to win the election. So then does that mean that she shouldn't run and that people shouldn't vote for her? You do believe in democracy don't you? You claim that this is about being an idealist. Au Contrair. Her supporters know full well what reality looks like. To claim that they do not know or understand politics is condescending. As you noted we are discussing the gaining, maintaining and use of power. Apparently you have overlooked that point of "gaining." McKinney or others like her will never just show up with power. They gain power the same way everyone else gains power: they start out with a small determined (perhaps idealist) group of people and then work their asses off.
let me say that no amount of solipsistic fist pounding about “radical principles” will change this society as much as the election of Barack Obama will as president of the US. Not to understand this is to have few clues about the history of this country, its people, or the history of the Black struggle in the US. It is also to be completely at odds with the masses of the Afro-American people, let us say with the masses of black and colored people internationally. How people who claim to lead the people but who time after time tail them so badly must be understood. It is because they confuse elitism with class consciousness.
There is not a doubt among us "intellectuals" that the election of Barack Obama will have a serious impact on the US and the world. We are keenly aware of this and it is for THAT reason why we critique brother Obama as we do. There is much at stake. As you know and said in your interview with Gill Noble, Newark, NJ has not had a white person in the seat of power since the 1970's. There's a whole generation of people in Newark who have never known a white mayor of the largest city in NJ. Yet the economic situation for blacks in Newark is pretty bad. Schools are generally below par. And crime? Do I have to even discuss that? But you got black people in the big house. You seem to have plenty of not too nice words for Corey Booker. Why is it OK for you to shit on Booker as often as you do, while those of us who are critical of Obama are subject to being shit on by you? Seems very hypocritical to me.
Returning to the masses of "Afro-American" people and their support of Obama. I understand it. Who doesn't want to see a black president? What we are saying is that you must hold Obama accountable like you would any other politician. Why is that a problem? If Obama is going to vote for banks to jack up interest rates, then that's not good. We need to hold Obama accountable. If Obama doesn't have the balls to vote to impeach Bush, then we need to ask what he stands for. What Constitution is he pledging to uphold? If Obama wants to further entangle the state with religious institutions and we are opposed to that, then we need to hold Obama accountable. Each and every time the voters allow the Democrats to compromise on issues, we allow them to move further to the right. It's about principles.
On the international stage, many of us have studied how the mere presence of black faces in high places doesn't necessarily translate to real, on the ground positive changes. See Kenya. See Myanmar (Burma), See Liberia. I asked a question in regards to an Obama presidency some time ago. What happens when Obama signs the papers that sells the arms to Israel that ends up killing Palestinians (or maybe some Iranians)? How would that reflect on black Americans? That is a serious question because and Obama presidency may mark the first time in history that Black Americans as a group are directly complicit in the oppression of another group. That, to me is a very scary thought.
For the so called left and would be radicals (and some grinning idiots who say they don’t even care about politics) the McKinney gambit is to label oneself “Quixote of the loyal opposition” to pipsqueak a hiss of disproval at the rulers while being an enabler of the same. Neither McCain nor McKinney will help us. Only Obama offers some actual help.
McKinney can't help us because WE did not help McKinney. Don't you forget that.
Even the dumbest things Obama has said re: Cuba and the soft shoe for Israel must be seen as the cost of realpolitik, that is he is not running for president of the NAACP and not to understand that those are the stances that must be taken in the present political context, even though we hold out to support what he said about initiating talks with the Cubans, the Palestinians. After years of Washington stupidity and slavish support for the Miami Gusanos and Israeli imperialism, there is in Obama’s raising of talks with the US Bourgeois enemies something that must be understood as the potential path for new initiative. It is the duty of a left progressive radical bloc to be loud and regular in our demands for the changes Obama has alluded to in his campaign. We must take up these issues and push collectively, as a Bloc, or he will be pushed inexorably to the right.
The tired ass argument about Obama not running for president of black America is just that. Tired. Obama has made more than "dumb" statements about Israel. He went so far as to make promises of an undivided Jerusalem as a capitol of Israel. This is something that has been negotiated off the table by previous administrations. Obama promised more to Israel than Israel has even been asking for. That's not soft shoeing. That's outright capitulation. He says he'll talk to Palestinians? So? Everyone talks to Palestinians. Bush has people talking to Palestinians. What's the diff man?
Now the funniest thing about this paragraph is the "duty of the progressive and radical bloc" to be "loud and regular." Dude that's what we've been doing. That one sentence completely contradicts the entire tenor of the preceding screed against McKinney supporters.
Some people were grousing about the father’s day address and the stance he took lecturing Black men to actually become fathers not just disappearing sexual partners. But can anyone who actually lives in the hood, and has raised children there really claim that what Obama said is somehow an “insult to half a race.” We need to take up that idea of making Black men stand up and embrace fatherhood (a lifetime gig) as men and quit winking at the vanished baby makers that litter our community with fatherless children. This is where a great deal of the raw material comes from for the gangs that imperil our communities.
As I answered one irate e-mailer who was pissed off at Obama for leveling that challenge, a Negro man killed my only sister, a Negro man killed my youngest daughter. I can’t give no mealy mouth slack about that, we need to Stand Up!
Let me say that I was an early and ardent supporter of Bill Cosby's call out tour. I still support Dr. Cosby. Why? Because I feel his advice was dead on. Some question why I could support Cosby and not Obama. After all they were saying much of the same things. Let me clue you in on why Obama was out of line. In politics a candidate regularly compliments a group that he or she wants to win votes from. That Obama took his first appearance in a church after severing ties with Rev. Wright's church was a clear message to white voters that he'll keep the niggers in line (in political terms). Clear as day. Cosby was sending no such message. You ought to be insulted that a black candidate would see fit to pander to white voters by exploiting a problem in the black community. Secondly, Obama chose to single out Black Men in the speech. His prerogative, but if he wanted to make a point about parenting, there is MUCH to be said about Black women as well. He hasn't gone there. That too is insulting. So it's not so much the message, which in and of itself is skewed, but the reason for it's delivery. Surely you can understand that point.
But where is the Black left and general progressive, radical and revolutionary lobby? That is the real job we need to address. We must bring something to the table. It is time for the left to really make some kind of Left Bloc to support Obama. I was at the Black Left meeting in North Carolina and had to argue with a group of folks who want to be revolutionary as heck with a Reconstruction Party supporting Cynthia McKinney. Though there was some good discussion, nothing concrete has been offered especially around the Obama campaign.
Good quesion brother Baraka. Given your advanced age, lets pose the question to you. I'll tell you what we don't bring to the table: Cash money. I disagree that there needs to be a Left Bloc to support Obama. What there needs to be is a Left Bloc that can throw financial and voter support behind any candidate that furthers their objectives. This is not a personality contest, this is an issue contest. If Obama fits the bill then he gets support. In regards to the meeting in North Carolina, they were doing just as I said. McKinney represents their interest, while Obama apparently does not. So why should they support him? Regardless, as you are well aware, revolutionary blacks are not exactly the type of people Obama wants support from anyway so what does it matter where they want to expend their energy?
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