In Solidarity with the National Women's March

All,

It is always BEAUTIFUL AND INSPIRING to see the great masses of citizens actively fighting back against tyranny and oppression, and on behalf of freedom, justice, equality, and self determination. This massive national demonstration of the collective will of the people to directly and fiercely oppose the rising tide of white supremacy, male supremacy and misogyny, homophobia, as well as global capitalism, militarism, and imperialism not only here in the U.S. but throughout the world is the key to understanding what needs to be done to actually change this society and the general direction of the world.

The sterling and extremely necessary example that millions of women of every nationality as well as religious, secular, and ethnic and sexual identity have set for all the rest of us is a new template and strong foundation for the kind of major national social/political movements and massive networks of organizations, coalitions, and radical agendas that we’re all going to need to consistently contribute to and be an integral part of in this ongoing battle against the ferocious rightwing forces that are currently aligned against democracy and justice in this country.

Remember that the politics of race, class, gender, and sexuality are inextricably connected and mutually dependent on each other and always have been. and always will be. We especially need to make these connections known and an essential part of our political activity in fighting the billionaire sociopath and his neofascist administration’s programs and policies. This will require constant vigilance, discipline, and principled solidarity on our part so that this fundamental message is not forgotten or obscured as we make our demands and desires known.

So I am not merely "encouraged" by what the extraordinary leadership of women in this movement has accomplished in this nation over the past 36 hours. I am ENERGIZED by what is now possible as we proudly face the harrowing future without fear, cynicism, fatalism, or crippling self doubt.

So let's celebrate the fact that THE RESISTANCE has begun and remember always as the late, great Malcolm X often said "they can't stop it because they didn't start it"...

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win...

Kofi

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/women-march-protest-president-trump.html?_r=0 

Defiant Voices Flood U.S. Cities as Women Rally for Rights

by SUSAN CHIRA and YAMICHE ALCINDOR 

January 21, 2017

New York Times

Three Generations of Women, Marching on Washington

For Amber Coleman-Mortley, the Women’s March on Washington was a family affair.

by BRENT McDONALD and BEN C. SOLOMON on Publish Date January 21, 2017. Photo by Ben C. Solomon/The New York Times. Watch in Times Video 

WASHINGTON — The day after what many had assumed would be the inauguration of the first female president, hundreds of thousands of women flooded the streets of Washington, and many more marched in cities across the country, in defiant, jubilant rallies against the man who defeated her.

Protesters jammed the streets near the Capitol for the main demonstration, packed so tightly at times that they could barely move. In Chicago, the size of a rally so quickly outgrew early estimates that the official march that was scheduled to follow was canceled for safety, though many paraded through downtown, anyway.

In Manhattan, Fifth Avenue became a tide of signs and symbolic pink hats, while in downtown Los Angeles, shouts of “love trumps hate” echoed along a one-mile route leading to City Hall, with many demonstrators spilling over into adjacent streets in a huge, festival-like atmosphere.

The marches were the kickoff for what their leaders hope will be a sustained campaign of protest in a polarized nation, riven by an election that raised unsettling questions about American values, out-of-touch elites and barriers to women’s ambitions.

 

Women March Around the U.S.

Hundreds of thousands of women came out to march in Washington, D.C. There were also hundreds of solidarity marches held around the nation and the world.

by NEETI UPADHYE on Publish Date January 21, 2017. Photo by Hilary Swift for The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »

On successive days, two parallel and separate Americas were on display in virtually the same location. First there was President Trump’s inauguration, his message of an ailing society he would restore to greatness aimed at the triumphant supporters who thronged Washington on Friday.

Then on Saturday, in what amounted to a counterinauguration, the speakers, performers and marchers proclaimed allegiance to a profoundly different vision of the nation. They voiced determination to protect an array of rights that they believe Mr. Trump threatens, and that they thought only recently were secure.

“Thank you for understanding that sometimes we must put our bodies where our beliefs are,” Gloria Steinem, the feminist icon and an honorary chairwoman of the march, told those gathered in Washington. “Pressing ‘send’ is not enough.”

To mobilize a progressive movement reeling from Hillary Clinton’s defeat, organizers broadened the platform beyond longstanding women’s issues such as abortion, equal pay and sexual assault to include immigrant rights, police brutality, mass incarceration, voter suppression and environmental protections

Protesters at the women’s march in Paris on Saturday. Credit Jacky Naegelen/Reuters

But the march’s origins were in the outrage and despair of many women after an election that placed gender in the spotlight as never before.

Mrs. Clinton assertively claimed the mantle of history, offering herself as the champion of women and families, and calling out her opponent for boasting of forcing himself on women in a recording that prompted a national conversation about sexual assault. In a sly allusion to the crude remarks Mr. Trump made on the tape, many marchers, women and men alike, wore pink “pussy hats” sporting cat ears.

In Washington, demonstrators old and young pushed strollers and hoisted children onto their shoulders or guided elderly parents through the milling crowds. They waved handmade signs: “Hate Does Not Make America Great,” “I Will Not Go Back Quietly to the 1950s” and “I’m 17 — Fear Me!” They chanted, “This is what democracy looks like.’”

Emma Wendt, 13, came with a large group of family members and schoolmates from Kensington, Md., for a simple reason: “being part of history.”

Crowds in hundreds of cities around the world gathered Saturday in conjunction with the Women’s March on Washington. 

OPEN Photographs

The marchers were confronting a president who has appointed just a handful of women to his cabinet and inner circle, and who has pledged to nominate a Supreme Court justice who opposes abortion rights and to dismantle a health care act that covers contraception. His appointees have track records of voting to cut funding for anti-domestic violence programs, opposing increases in the minimum wage and restructuring Medicaid — moves that disproportionately affect women and minorities.

Crowd estimates were not available in some locations, but a city official in Washington said that participation there likely surpassed half a million, according to The Associated Press. Added to the more than 400,000 that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office said had marched in New York City, hundreds of thousands more in Chicago and Los Angeles, and those who showed up at many other marches nationwide, the total attendance easily surpassed one million in the United States. Marches also took place in a number of cities abroad, including Berlin, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Cape Town.

In Boston, where the crowd swelled to 175,000, Senator Elizabeth Warren looked out at the admiring throngs and conjured up the image of Mr. Trump’s being sworn in the day before.

“The sight is now burned into my eyes forever,” Ms. Warren said, adding, “We will use that vision to fight harder.”

Estimates by crowd scientists of attendance at events on Friday and Saturday and how they calculated it. 

OPEN Graphic

Yet women did not protest — or vote — as a bloc. About 53 percent of white women voted for Mr. Trump, according to exit polls, and many said his demeaning comments about women mattered less to them than their belief that he had the independence and business experience to bring about change, restore well-paying jobs and protect America’s borders.

“The women’s march clearly doesn’t represent all women,” Alex Smith, the national chairwoman of the College Republicans, said in an email. She noted the exclusion of anti-abortion women’s groups from the event. “It is precisely this type of dogmatic intransigence that voters rejected.”

The marches came a day after confrontations between anti-Trump protesters and the police led to more than 200 arrests in Washington. But Saturday’s demonstrations were peaceful, and counterprotests were few. In St. Paul, one man was arrested after marchers reported he had “sprayed irritants” into the crowd, the police said.

Though the Washington march ended within sight of the White House, and some demonstrators passed by his recently opened hotel, Mr. Trump did not cross paths with the crowd. But on Sunday morning, Mr. Trump acknowledged the demonstrations on Twitter, questioning whether the protesters had voted.

A little later, Sunday, Mr. Trump added on Twitter that he supported the right of peaceable assembly.

Among those celebrity performers, were some who had appeared at campaign events for Mrs. Clinton, including Madonna, who gave a speech, said toward the end of of the march. “I have thought a lot about blowing up the White House. But I know that this will not change anything,” she said. (The Secret Service declined to comment on the remark, though an investigation seemed unlikely.)

A woman wore a United States flag as a hijab during a protest in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Credit Gregor Fischer/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

After attending the inauguration on Friday, Mrs. Clinton herself was not seen at the march. She did, however, acknowledge the moment on Twitter.

“Thanks for standing, speaking & marching for our values @womensmarch,” she wrote.

The marches captured the potential and the perils for the progressive movement — whether it can frame its message to appeal to new generations and whether it can translate protests into action locally and nationally.

In a sly allusion to crude remarks made by Mr. Trump about sexual assault, many marchers wore hats sporting cat ears. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Plans for Saturday’s march in Washington began as Facebook posts just after the election by a retired lawyer in Hawaii and a fashion designer in New York, both of whom are white and had no experience organizing protests. Soon, protests flooded the feeds urging them to diversify. In the end, a triumvirate of African-American, Latina and Muslim women joined the leadership team.

The march’s initial struggles echoed broader debates in the movement about whether the courting of new demographic groups alienated the white working-class voters who had carried Mr. Trump to victory, or whether white women had betrayed gender solidarity by voting for him. Yet on Saturday, these tensions did not deter a multiracial, multigenerational turnout. Mothers marched with daughters and granddaughters; whole families, including husbands and sons, marched arm in arm.

Mikhael Tara Garver, 37, of Brooklyn, who marched with her mother, recalled how her family had reacted after the election: “We were all calling my great-aunts because we all knew how important Hillary was to them and how important surviving to see that moment was for them.”

Another family came from Baltimore. “We have to get away from fear,” said Lureen Grace Wiggins, 49. Her daughter, Eden, 17, was exhilarated by the size of the crowd: “When you’re out here and people see you, they know you care.”

The march was rich in historical allusions — most deliberately, the 1963 march led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But it echoed many other marches, including those in the 1970s that brought hundreds of thousands of women to the streets championing an Equal Rights Amendment that was ultimately defeated, and those from the late 1990s and on for abortion rights, culminating in a 2004 March for Women’s Lives that organizers said drew more than one million to the capital.

Saturday’s march happened to come just six days before quite a different one: the annual March for Life by opponents of abortion.

But perhaps the most apt analogy, said Ellen Fitzpatrick, the author of “The Highest Glass Ceiling,” was to the 1913 suffragists’ march on Washington, timed to coincide with the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson. Led by the renowned suffragist Alice Paul, it featured a lawyer, Inez Milholland, riding a white horse down Pennsylvania Avenue, with 24 floats, nine marching bands and luminaries like Helen Keller. The women were hooted and jeered at and roughed up by the police, prompting congressional hearings and generating public sympathy. They won the vote seven years later.

Faye Wattleton, the former president of Planned Parenthood, said that women have always had to regroup, even after they thought battles were won. “This is not new,” she said. “We have to go back to the battlefield and re-fight the wars against women.”

Correction: January 21, 2017
An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of the author of “The Highest Glass Ceiling.” It is Fitzpatrick, not Fitzgerald.

Reporting was contributed by Farah Stockman from Washington, Julie Turkewitz from Denver, Jess Bidgood from Boston, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Anemona Hartocollis from New York, Mitch Smith from Chicago, Christina Capecchi from St. Paul and Jennifer Medina from Los Angeles.

A version of this article appears in print on January 22, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Defiant Yet Jubilant Voices Flood U.S. Cities. Order Reprints| Today's Paper

Major Evidence of How the Occupy Wall Street Movement Has Changed the Direction of American Politics

(Photo: Robert Stolarik / The New York Times)

http://www.truth-out.org/ten-ways-occupy-movement-changes-everything/1321111931

All,

Facts on the ground...

Kofi


Ten Ways the Occupy Movement Changes Everything
10 November 2011
by Sarah van Gelder, David Korten and Steve Piersanti
YES! Magazine [3] | News Analysis

Before the Occupy Wall Street movement, there was little discussion of the outsized power of Wall Street and the diminishing fortunes of the middle class.

The media blackout was especially remarkable given that issues like jobs and corporate influence on elections topped the list of concerns for most Americans.

Occupy Wall Street changed that. In fact, it may represent the best hope in years that “we the people” will step up to take on the critical challenges of our time. Here’s how the Occupy movement is already changing everything:

1. It names the source of the crisis.
Political insiders have avoided this simple reality: The problems of the 99% are caused in large part by Wall Street greed [4], perverse financial incentives, and a corporate takeover of the political system. Now that this is understood, the genie is out of the bottle and it can’t be put back in.

2. It provides a clear vision of the world we want.
We can create a world that works for everyone [5], not just the wealthiest 1%. And we, the 99%, are using the spaces opened up by the Occupy movement to conduct a dialogue about the world we want.

3. It sets a new standard for public debate.
Those advocating policies and proposals must now demonstrate that their ideas will benefit the 99%. Serving only the 1% will not suffice, nor will claims that the subsidies and policies that benefit the 1% will eventually “trickle down.”

4. It presents a new narrative.
The solution is not to starve government or impose harsh austerity measures that further harm middle-class and poor people already reeling from a bad economy. Instead, the solution is to free society and government from corporate dominance

5. It creates a big tent.
We, the 99%, are people of all ages, races, occupations, and political beliefs. We will resist being divided or marginalized. We are learning to work together with respect.[6]. A functioning democracy is our best shot at addressing critical social, environmental, and economic crises.

6. It offers everyone a chance to create change.
No one is in charge; no organization or political party calls the shots. Anyone can get involved, offer proposals, support the occupations, and build the movement. Because leadership is everywhere and new supporters keep turning up, there is a flowering of creativity and a resilience that makes the movement nearly impossible to shut down.

7. It is a movement, not a list of demands.
The call for deep change [7]—not temporary fixes and single-issue reforms—is the movement’s sustaining power. The movement is sometimes criticized for failing to issue a list of demands, but doing so could keep it tied to status quo power relationships and policy options. The occupiers and their supporters will not be boxed in.

8. It combines the local and the global.
People in cities and towns around the world are setting their own local agendas, tactics, and aims. What they share in common is a critique of corporate power and an identification with the 99%, creating an extraordinary wave of global solidarity.

9. It offers an ethic and practice of deep democracy and community.
Slow, patient decision-making in which every voice is heard translates into wisdom, common commitment, and power. Occupy sites are set up as communities in which anyone can discuss grievances, hopes, and dreams, and where all can experiment with living in a space built around mutual support.

10. We have reclaimed our power.
Instead of looking to politicians and leaders to bring about change, we can see now that the power rests with us [8]. Instead of being victims to the forces upending our lives, we are claiming our sovereign right to remake the world.

Like all human endeavors, Occupy Wall Street and its thousands of variations and spin-offs will be imperfect. There have already been setbacks and divisions, hardships and injury. But as our world faces extraordinary challenges—from climate change to soaring inequality—our best hope is the ordinary people, gathered in imperfect democracies, who are finding ways to fix a broken world.

This article is adapted from the book, This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement [9]edited by Sarah van Gelder and the staff of YES! Magazine [10] and published November 2011 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers [11].




Links:

[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/8958
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/8958
[3] http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/ten-ways-the-occupy-movement-changes-everything
[4] http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/wall-street-occupiers-the-future-is-in-your-hands
[5] http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/occupywallstreet
[6] http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/people-vs-corporations
[7] http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/sarah-van-gelder-pbs-newshour-interview
[8] http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-most-important-thing-in-the-world
[9] http://store.yesmagazine.org/this-changes-everything
[10] http://www.yesmagazine.org/
[11] http://www.bkconnection.com/ProdDetails.asp?ID=9781609945879&PG=1&Type=RLMa&PCS=BKP
[12] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[13] http://www.truth-out.org/sarah-van-gelder/1303574087
[14] http://www.truth-out.org/david-korten/1311104389
[15] http://www.truth-out.org/steve-piersanti/1321111739
[16] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[17] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[18] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=stunning-victory-occupy-wall-street-has-already-achieved/1319637976
[19] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=making-safer-spaces-occupy-wall-street-addresses-questions-security-zuccotti-park/1320679533

DEMOCRACY IS IN THE STREETS!: The Essential Meaning of the Occupy Wall Street Movement Both Here and Abroad

http://www.thenation.com/article/164078/occupy-wall-street-beginning-here?page=full

"Strong people don't need strong leaders"

--Ella Baker (1903-1986)--Founder of SNCC

All,

In ongoing solidarity with the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement worldwide, and in support of the article by Jonathan Schell below, I repeat with added emphasis the following statement from two weeks ago:

"What is happening at this very moment on Wall Street is by far the most important and necessary political movement in this country today. Nothing else is even close. We must now work tirelessly to establish a real viable NATIONAL NETWORK of radical ideas, strategies, tactics, and goals through a plethora of grassroots mass-based organizations throughout the country that will create both in the short and long term a concrete alternative to the criminally oppressive and exploitive political economy and culture of this country...

So this ain't about President Obama, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Tea Party, the media, or for that matter any other "independent" or opportunist or self proclaimed meglomaniacal "leaders." This is thankfully way beyond all that. THIS is about US, which is to say the actual millions of citizens who are viscerally suffering from the venality and sheer madness of our current political and economic system. Thus it is absolutely imperative for all of us to remember now more than ever that Democracy cannot possibly be found among the elites because like always DEMOCRACY IS IN THE STREETS...Stay tuned..."

--Kofi Natambu
October 5, 2011

Occupy Wall Street: The Beginning Is Here
by Jonathan Schell
October 19, 2011

This article appeared in the November 7, 2011 edition of The Nation.

Nothing is more striking about the Occupy Wall Street movement, which in a political instant has swept through not only the United States but the world, than its origin. It seemed to come out of nowhere, like a virgin birth. There were, of course, organizations that played a critical initiating role, which is gradually being acknowledged and rightly honored (see, for example, Nathan Schneider, “From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Everywhere,” October 31). But it would be wrong to assign paternity in any ordinary sense to them, and they indeed disavow such a claim. On the contrary, the core activists in Liberty Plaza founded on the spot a decentralized, nonviolent pattern of “leaderless” self-organization that made every participant, old or new to the process, a “founding father” (or mother). The movement, you could say, was father and mother to itself. To join it was, immediately, to become it.

Roars of applause for executions at the GOP debate, official approval of torture, barbaric prison conditions, obstruction of aid to storm victims and children in need—is our nation descending into barbarism?

This feature was underscored when, in response to a police ban on megaphones, the occupiers deployed their now famous human microphone, in which an individual speaker’s words are repeated by all within hearing, inventing a new animal, a speaking crowd, who thus become the voice of their joint action.

This indefinite open-endedness of origins was carried forward in another conspicuous novelty of the movement: its lack of a list of demands. According to some reports, early efforts to frame such lists went nowhere. If so, the failure became a virtue. It was not a new set of policy ideas that was being born—the world was already overloaded with these, unacted upon—but a new spirit: a spirit of action, without which all the demands in the world are a dead letter.

What we might call the demand for demands, so prominent in early media reactions, was based on a fundamental error. It confused demands and content. A movement—like a book or an article—can have content without demands. Demands are a later stage that comes once the content is developed and, above all, once the movement is strong. This movement was born rich in unmistakable content. As everyone who cares to look knows by now, its members are crying out “Enough!” to a corrupt political, economic and media establishment that is hijacking the world’s wealth for itself, immiserating ordinary people, sabotaging the rule of law, waging interminable savage and futile wars, plundering the world’s finite resources, lying about all this to the public and threatening Earth’s life forms into the bargain. As for the development of leaders and demands, Anonymous, one of the precursor groups, offered a prescription in keeping with the spirit of the movement: “If you are looking to contact one of our leaders, go to the nearest mirror and peer deeply into it. It may take some time, but, eventually, one of our leaders will appear with answers to all of your questions.”

An understanding of Occupy Wall Street’s beginnings and continuing structure perhaps offers a clue to an issue that promptly began to roil the movement: what its relationship to established groups, especially the Democratic Party, should be. Almost immediately, top Democrats, including President Obama and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, weighed in with friendly and supportive comments. (Obama said, “The protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.” Pelosi said, “The message of the protesters is a message for the establishment in every place.”) Newspapers of moderate bent eventually jumped on board. The New York Times sang the praises of the occupation in an editorial. Older leftish movements like MoveOn threw their support behind it. Even the counterattack was surprisingly feeble and off-balance. No sooner had House majority leader Eric Cantor called the occupation a “mob” than he turned around and admitted the nation knows that “folks at the top end of the income scale…make too much and too many don’t make enough.”

The usual metaphor for a movement is an explosion. But Occupy Wall Street acted more like an implosion. The established actors appeared not so much to yield in the face of pressure exerted by the movement as to fall inward into the potent new space the demonstrators had created. Only a few hundred strong at first, the movement set up a blackboard on which established powers turned out to be unexpectedly eager to write their messages. As it turned out, the powers had demands to spare, as if they had been saving them up.

Yet shortly after these friendly faces appeared, petitioning the petitioners, the worries about co-optation arose in the movement. While welcoming support, a “working group” of the occupation voiced fear of “divide and conquer attempts being made to co-opt the movement,” and warned that some “are trying to label us as the Democrats’ version of the Tea Party”—a development that would undermine “the very essence of this movement with your obsolete divide and conquer groupthink propaganda.” And certainly it is true that a party affiliation would be even more stultifying than a premature list of demands.

But it may be that such worries are unnecessary. The power of the movement does not lie in the mite that it can add to or withdraw from some existing grouping through such traditional means as alliances and endorsements. Rather, its power lies in its direct appeal to the hearts and minds of the population at large—to the 99 percent that the movement so audaciously and promisingly claims to represent. By this process, the mite becomes mighty. It was surely such a felt tremor in the hidden recesses of hearts and minds—in short, in public opinion and, even more, in public will—that alone can explain the established expressions of support as well as the wildfire spread of the protest.

When such sea changes in opinion and will are under way, entrenched institutions start to tremble and shake, and political miracles become possible. If the scale of the national and international response to Occupy Wall Street is any measure, they have begun.

The exceptional creativity in the movement has been evident in countless handwritten signs. For example: I Lost My Job but Found an Occupation. And, Love Is the New Fear. But perhaps the loveliest, appearing in the demonstration’s early days and cited in these pages, was The Beginning Is Near. To this we can now gratefully add, The Beginning Is Here.

Jonathan Schell is the Doris Shaffer Fellow at The Nation Institute and teaches a course on the nuclear dilemma at Yale...

Also by The Author

Cruel America (Death Penalty, Economic Policy, Conservatives and the American Right, Cultural Criticism and Analysis)

The New American Jujitsu (America as Empire, Foreign Policy, Cultural Criticism and Analysis, War on Terrorism)

What's Really Required of Progressive African American Leadership in a Time of Global Crisis

Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou

http://forusa.org/blogs/osagyefo-uhuru-sekou/cornel-west-crisis-black-leadership/8743

All,

An excellent piece and right on target. This is what is known as a clear-minded, mature, and politically sophisticated critical analysis of what the real issues are in this entire very important public debate, and why only a genuine critique informed by a disciplined commitment to alternative ideas-- and most importantly an organized grassroots and mass-based social movement-- can seriously address and resolve the problems that we all face on a national level--no matter who the President is at any given time...

Kofi


Cornel West and the Crisis in Black Leadership
By Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou
23 May 2011
Fellowship of Reconciliation

The recent controversy ignited by Cornel West’s critique of President Barack Obama and subsequent critiques of Dr. West reveal a fundamental crisis in black leadership. Traditionally, African-American intellectuals and activists have encountered the office of the president as outsiders with a nuanced understanding and repertoire of tactics including electoral brokerage, inside strategy, and social protest (organized and rhetorical).

These tactics have been executed against “The White Man.” The oppositional politic was the normative means of encountering the office of the presidency and the deployment of fierce rhetoric was an accepted means of public engagement. Both the candidacy and presidency of Barack Obama are a disruption of that rhetorical and tactical tradition. The African-American tradition of speaking truth to power has been complicated because that power is now embodied by “A Black Man.”

This is a unique moment in American democracy. The white supremacist gaze in the United States demonized black bodies, subjected their intelligence, and interrogated their national allegiance. Barack Obama’s winning campaign called into question these deep-seated notions that shaped U.S. public policy and perceptions.

Hence, the Obama presidency is an electoral and existential victory. The way in which African-American people make meaning for themselves inside the American empire has been recast. There is a widely-accepted narrative about Obama’s election. While it is true that his presence in the White House is because of his intelligence, effective fundraising apparatus, and sophisticated campaign machinery, the red carpets at the inaugural balls were soaked in the blood of martyrs.

The presidency of Barack Obama is a by-product of African Americans’ 400 years of struggle for access to the democratic project called America. The president has often located himself in that tradition and trajectory. He has strategically trafficked in the prophetic rhetoric of the civil rights movement and employed the homiletical rhythms of the Black Church. He has conveniently used these cultural signifiers in a way that is titillating to the national consciousness—linguistically embodying black folks’ quest for a more democratic society.

Moreover, black folks take great pride in the presence of three generations of African Americans in the White House. The real image of a beautiful black family beaming into the homes of all Americans has a deep impact on the psyche of the nation, and a denigrated people. There is a collective desire on the part of black America to protect and shield their existential idol-President Barack Hussein Obama. This is a new space in U.S. history—racial and collective national memory. The right-wing backlash, contemptible treatment, and flat-out disrespect consistently directed at the President and First Lady only serve to reinforce this protective existential and racial logic.

However, there is a counterpoint to this protectionist logic. Based on the criterion set forth by the African-American freedom struggle, there is an expectation beyond physical and psychic symbolism. Behind the ad hominem attacks, personal slights, and blogosphere punditry, what is at stake in West’s complaint is this prophetic expectation—there must be public policy to reflect the very tradition that the president uses and benefited from in his rise to power. Is it inappropriate to have this expectation of the President Barack Obama? Is it appropriate for black folks to levy a critique and action against a black man in the White House? Or must black leadership focus on defending the president from racist attacks?

The protectionist logic combined with the ultra-conservative Republican Party has circumscribed the political vision of the vast majority of African Americans. The logic goes that criticism of the president is tantamount to supporting ultra-conservative politics. Regardless of his legislative record, African Americans will vote for him in record numbers. This electoral allegiance is not a negotiating tool, but, rather, an existential duty. The protectionists cheapen any critical conversation about the president’s agenda. The only legitimate engagement is an insider strategy—access to the White House and supporting the administration’s agenda at all cost. Accordingly, organized and rhetorical protests are, vehemently, dismissed. In this formulation, the aforementioned questions and West’s lamentation remain unanswered.

The improvised electoral options guarantee that the president will not have to provide any substantive policy response to underemployment, unemployment, foreclosures, affordable healthcare, quality public education, expanding prison-industrial complex, and affordable housing—all of which affect African Americans, disproportionately. This makes him no different than any other president. Hence, he should be treated as such.

Every president since Abraham Lincoln has had to contend with an organized and rhetorical protest—the prophetic tradition. This tradition has always focused on the nation’s treatment of the most vulnerable citizens—the least of these. Under the prophetic gaze, politicians have either been celebrated or rebuked. Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists supported the Underground Railroad and offered stern public rebukes of Abraham Lincoln for not ending slavery. A. Philip Randolph and the broader labor movement marched and chastised Franklin D. Roosevelt until the creation of the New Deal. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement pressured and protested the Kennedy and Johnson administration into the passage of civil rights and the Great Society legislation.

King once remarked that electoral politics are thermometers—measuring political climate; social protests and movements are thermostats—setting political climate. Organized and rhetorical protests have set the climate for an effective insider strategy and subsequent electoral allegiance in the voting booth. Prophetic rhetoric and organized rage have created the context for the passage of public policy that improves the quality of life for the least of these. The contemporary political climate is such that there are very limited possibilities for progressive social policies to emerge from the administration, itself. A recalcitrant Congress, a right-of-center Democratic Party, and two decades of neoliberal policies require that the president serve a right-of-center agenda which has been at odds with the prophetic tradition and the needs of the most vulnerable.

Hence, African-American leadership can not go it alone. The challenges facing democracy are nothing less that the retraction of the promise of the civil rights movement, dismantling of the Great Society, and reversal of the New Deal—let alone an ever-expanding prison- and military-industrial complex. Cornel West’s critique is part and parcel of a grand tradition of fiery prophetic rhetoric that must be connected to social movements. In order to shift the political discourse and create the conditions for progressive policy, a new multi-racial and multi-issue coalition has to emerge. Rhetorical protest must be matched with mass organizing.

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou is a Freeman Fellow of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR-USA). This article was originally published on May 20, 2011 on “the feministwire” and is being cross-posted in various ally communities for wider distribution.

Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou's blog:

http://forusa.org/blog/osagyefo-uhuru-sekou

http://theafricanamericanclarioncall.com/?p=3213

All,

Here is still more CLARITY and DEPTH in this very important national debate...

Kofi

Dr. Cornel West

WEST VS. OBAMA
by Greg L
May 19, 2011
The African American Clarion Call

I’ve been on a bit of hiatus from my blog, in part due to work and in part to just taking a bit of a break. I rarely run out of things to say, but sometimes one has to do more listening and reading than “saying” and I find that’s good to do exclusively on occasion to gain some perspective.

It looks like we’ve got a fight brewing between the president and Princeton professor Cornell West over Obama’s credentials as a black man and West taking personal affront to being not respected. This really isn’t new as West has been having issues with Obama since shortly after his inauguration. In my view, some of the heat Obama is taking from West is to be dismissed while he has legitimate points on others.

First, let’s deal with that which should be dismissed. West asserts that Obama’s background is such that he’s more comfortable dealing with elite whites than he is dealing with “free black men”. Presumably, West counts himself among those who are free black men. I think it would be impossible for Obama to have become president with the support among the elite if he wasn’t comfortable moving in those circles. The converse is also true; that’s to say that there must also be a comfort level with him felt by the elite players. Based on our existing political structure in this country, pretty much anyone who ascends to the presidency has to meet that particular criteria and that’s the primary reason why many of the people who’ve been in that office are a product of the nation’s elite educational institutions and organizations. I’d imagine that West himself would have had to meet similar criteria in his experiences at Harvard and Princeton. So this criticism is pretty much a cheap shot way of calling Obama an Uncle Tom and I really think it can and should be dismissed as such.

But once one gets past that, there is a substantive critique of Obama’s foreign and domestic policies, particularly those domestic policies revolving around the financial crisis. On the latter, West suggests that Obama is “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of the corporate plutocrats.” Again, the reference to Obama being a black mascot clouds the issue and smacks of calling him an Uncle Tom, so I reject that part of the statement, but I find myself in agreement with the concept that Obama is very much a captive of the oligarchs. Rather than using this crisis to pursue much needed reforms, punishment of those who caused the problems and actually break the hold they have on the economy, Obama and his economic team have instead pursued accommodative policies that delay the inevitable day of reckoning. Rather than bringing the change on this front that everyone hoped for, we gotten a milquetoast response to a true crisis that really hasn’t ended. It’s only been ameliorated by delaying the day of reckoning.

On the foreign policy front, we’ve largely seen a continuation and expansion of the Bush policies. The war front has been expanded in Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan and the sorts of things that have always gone on in pursuit of Pax Americana abroad continue unabated. Drone attacks have been expanded, Guantanamo remains open, domestic spying continues unabated and you can’t travel without getting groped and felt on. He continues the Bush policy of “exporting” democracy in the middle east as a tool for regime change while standing down on regime change for the tyrants that happen to be our “friends”. On the so called war on terror, the doctrines of Obama and Bush are virtually indistinguishable. That’s certainly not the change that many voted for and West’s critique here is spot on.

What we have here is a right wing democrat and rather than promoting change, Obama is more concerned with continuing the status quo. To be honest, I don’t think that he could have done anything else as that’s the nature of our political system. The system has swung towards fascism and political behavior across the board has been shaped towards that end. As that idea dawns on more people, there will be a backlash. You can’t sell everyone change and then bring none of it. That’s not to suggest that any of this would have been easy, so the fact that he hasn’t brought substantive change is really not the issue. The issue revolves around the failure to fight for it and to represent the interests of the people. West’s indictment against Obama here as well is spot on.

Personally, what I look for in a leader is the ability to speak the unvarnished truth, regardless of how controversial and painful it may be. This is what the country urgently needs and truth is the only premise upon which a true solution can be formulated. One can’t just hold his finger to the wind and do the political calculus as a condition of telling it. One has to have the courage to tell it, no matter the outcome or the controversy that may attend it and not cower in fear because of what Fox News is going to say. The Shirley Sherrod affair was instructive on Obama’s fears and lack of backbone.

For a fleeting moment, many believed that change was possible. It’s becoming clear that Obama sold what he has never attempted to deliver. It will be very hard for the next fresh face who comes along promising the sky to be believed as this is the last hurrah for hope and change.

RELATED POSTS

Cornel West: Response to Obama’s State of the Union Speech
Obama fires back: Responds to African-American Critics
Cornel West: Obama is for big business not the jobless
House Republicans Vow “No Compromise”
The Alien in the White House

Cornel West on the Struggle for Democracy and Justice in the United States and What It Means in the 21st Century

Dr. Cornel West provides illumination on the state of the nation in the intellectual sanctuary of his Princeton office (Photo: Max Eternity)

Man of Mystery: LEGENDS - Cornel West from the Man of Mystery series (Limited-edition digital print by Max Eternity)

In the following five video clips:

West explains what it means to be a "funkmaster," while also commenting on America as a "death-dodging, death-ducking, death-denying culture."

West makes a comparative analysis of the respective legacies of MLK and Malcolm X.

West talks about the two forms of a new Jim Crow offered by the Democratic and Republican parties, also speaking to the "gangster-like" activities of President Obama's big-banking allies on Wall Street. West shares his understanding of casino capitalism and what he calls "turbo-capitalism." West also explains why President Obama is unlike FDR.

West says the left in America has been pushed out to the wilderness - the "poor people demonized, poverty criminalized, trade unions scapegoated," while at the same time we saw "prophetic churches, mosques and synagogues marginalized." West comments on President Obama's choice to prop up Wall Street by placing the very people who destroyed the US economy - Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, et al. - on his economic team.

West talks about President Obama's unwillingness to make mention of poor people in his 2011 State of the Union Address and asserts that Obama's economic team has no care or concern for the poor.

Dr. Cornel West: Greetings From a 21st-Century Prophet
Sunday 5 June 2011
by Max Eternity
Truthout | Multimedia Interview


"There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie."

-Dr. Cornel West

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Can America's collective economics inform who we are as a people, whereby - through obsessive bean-counting - we sculpt our destiny, tacitly sanctioning the stripping of basic dignity from fellow citizens, the erosion of civil liberties, the evisceration of public education policies, of the arts and humanities, bankrupting entire communities, tarnishing longstanding values of the populace and its self-image, thus ultimately destroying all that was once valuable to society?

For even after the world swooned from the megahype of England's latest royal wedding and the hip, hip, hurrah of President Obama's ordered assassination of Osama bin Laden, a cornucopia of catastrophic socioeconomic horrors - in addition to America's continued unpreparedness for natural disaster - still face this nation: endless war, long-term unemployment, swelling prison populations and multiple years of record-breaking home foreclosures.

All of these problems may be well on their way to becoming the new normal in the US, but they won't be here to stay if a certain brilliant, black man of prophetic word and deed can help it - namely, Dr. Cornel West.

West equates America's banking elite with gangsters and deplores President Obama's choice to surround himself with their minions - Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers et al. This well-heeled phalanx of criminals is, in West's view, to blame for many, if not most, of America's current ills.

In a moment when the clatter and chatter of austerity economics has reached a fever pitch, West observes that some elected officials and policymakers want to take austerity to yet another level of penny-pinching belt-tightening, which almost always means cutting America's already-anemic social programs to depressed new lows of paucity. The union-busting in Wisconsin and elsewhere assures the near-irreversibility of those lows.

It would seem money is tight, except when it comes to finding $100 million a day to drop bombs on Libya. That's a peculiarity that serves as proof that, no matter how supposedly broke the country is, the American government seems to always have a blank check handy for certain things, such as the ambiguous and wildly unsuccessful war on drugs, and the war on terror.

President Obama once embodied the promise of a glorious future for this nation. In these times, however, West points out that Obama's leadership more or less represents a renaissance denied, a platform of unfulfilled assurances.

President Obama, he said in an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, is the, "black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats." Yet such criticisms come much to the chagrin of some African-American heavyweights like Al Sharpton, who recently appeared on MSNBC saying that, "too many of us are putting it all on the president," and Melissa Harris-Perry, who wrote in an article published in The Nation that many of West's comments were "utter hilarity."

West stands firmly by his remarks. For all the president's super-sophistication and caviar oration, in West's view, the enduring fact remains that almost everything Obama has chosen to put in place, such as the Summers-Geithner economic team, spells business as usual. This pattern leads to one to question: does hope minus change equal more of the same ... a la Dubya?

"To be human, you must bear witness to justice," West writes in his book, "Hope on a Tightrope," for, "[j]ustice is what love looks like in public." It's an idea that West is passionate about, even though truth and justice might seem antiquated in this waterboarding, Guantanamo Bay world where wars of aggression have become commonplace.

Nevertheless, in a podcast recorded in his Princeton University office on April 27, 2011, West dug deep into his passion for justice and his kinship and empathy for the poor and working class, and also shared what it means to be a "funkmaster." It was an electrifying conversation in which West spoke frankly about the Obama administration and the unfolding developments in Egypt and other nations of that region. He also spoke about some of the more private joys in his life, such as the particulars of his favorite musical legends. This discourse came after enjoying a shared round of homemade gourmet cookies from renowned cake masters Ellen Baumwoll and Cheryl Kleinman at Betty Bakery in Brooklyn. It was a chat that found West imparting wisdom about the critical importance of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (FDR) Works Projects Administration (WPA) as an example from which America could be learning. He also provided some illumination as to why Obama has not chosen the course of reigniting FDR's grand civic plan in a way that is appropriately nuanced for today.

"For me, I come out of a black freedom movement that is on intimate terms with death," West says. "The social death of slavery ... civic death, Jim Crow ... psychic death, taught to hate ourselves ... but America," he says "is a death-dodging, death-denying, death-ducking culture - so they clash."

In the dialogue, West spoke of the power of love, too, illustrating the idea by holding up Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as both a unified field and contrasting manifestations of what love means in action.





This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.