💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › bill-bachmann-obamanations.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 22:04:43. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Obamanations Author: Bill Bachmann Date: July 16, 2007 Language: en Topics: Barack Obama, The Utopian, Elections, United States of America Source: Retrieved on 22nd July 2021 from https://www.utopianmag.com/archives/tag-The%20Utopian%20Vol.%206%20-%202007/obamanations/ Notes: Published in The Utopian Vol. 6.
Among the lists which inundate my e-mail inbox is one on which someone
last winter posted an appeal for funds to help the campaign of Barack
Obama. Although this list has several thousand members, like many
others, only a score or so people regularly post messages. In the
exchanges which follow, no one came forward to say “right on” to what I
wrote. I can only hope that my posts had some positive influence on the
people who merely lurk on the list, reading but not writing.
The problem here is not only fundraising for Mr. Obama, but the
electoral strategy itself. Any serious gains made by Black people have
come from mass struggle, not supporting candidates. It took a bloody
civil war to get rid of slavery. Similarly, it took a movement in which
tens of thousands of people risked their lives and livelihoods to
abolish Jim Crow (the legal version, that is).
The end of slavery teaches us more: the mere and implicit threat to its
existence personified by the racist Lincoln drove the slavocracy and
most of the U.S. military to stage a coup and break up the country
rather than abide by the results of a democratic election.
If Obama—or anyone else—seriously tried to bring freedom and justice to
this country, he or she would also be facing a coup. (Parenthetical
note: some of the most prominent economic royalists of the 1930’s tried
to organise a coup against the reformist Roosevelt because they thought
he was giving too much to the working class).
I believe that the U.S. is in a deeper political crisis than many of us
realise. Think about it. The corporate pooh-bahs of the Democratic Party
are frantically waving the banner of a Black man! Does this mean they
have suddenly given up their racism? I doubt it. More likely, they know
that another pale face will not save their rotten racist system.
The solution is not electoralism, but revolution. What needs to be
discussed is not which candidate to support, but what kind of revolution
is necessary.
Actually, supporting candidates has made a difference for black folks.
Had not black folks supported Dawson in the years before FDR’s final
term, Dawson wouldn’t have been around to turn thumbs down on a Southern
segregationist and get Harry S. Truman slated as FDR’s vice presidential
running mate. Truman made some bold steps that advanced the cause of
civil rights, including desegregating the Armed Forces. He was far more
sympathetic to uplifting blacks, to the point of advancing the civil
rights policies Eleanor Roosevelt attempted to have her husband carry
out. Truman, compared with FDR, came from humble beginnings as a
Missouri farm boy (his paternal grandmother was a staunch Missouri
Confederate who was persecuted mercilessly by Union troops for her
allegiance). Speaking of humble beginnings, Clinton’s underprivileged
ass and his father wouldn’t have survived if blacks hadn’t traded with
his grandfather’s store in Hope, Ark. And he turned out to be a Kennedy
Democrat in the worst Dixiecrat center-rightist way. Obama’s father
abandoned his white mother and his biracial behind, he grows up to be
intelligent, erudite, smooth, well educated, and accomplished. If we’re
going to make him a pariah and unfit for the highest office in the land
based on that, might as well have book burnings against DuBois, Alain
Locke, Paul Robeson, Jean Toomer, Lorraine Hansberry, Frederick
Douglass, Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells and Simple’s creator.
The discussion about Obama, Harry Truman, or anyone else for that
matter, shouldn’t turn around sociological questions as to humble
upbringings, parental abandonment, or whether one is smart, erudite,
etc. Let’s assume all of it to be true. However, in Obama’s case, none
of it speaks to his programme, his running as a candidate of a
capitalist party or, most important, the electoral strategy itself.
As I pointed out in my original post, the latter is a dead end, and
whetever Cong. Dawson did in 1944 has to be seen in the context of
millions of Black people joining the NAACP, Randolph threatening to
march on Washington in the middle of a war, and the uncounted numbers of
incidents all over the countlry caused by Jim Crow confronting Black
soldiers who supposedly were fighting for democracy. Again, it was Black
folks’ mass struggle, not electoral politics, which won the gains which
are attributed in white lights to Eleanor Roosevelt, Truman, et al.
Further, as I said in my original message, I think that the political
crisis of capitalism in the U.S. is deeper than many of us realise, or
else we wouldn’t be seeing a significant number of the powers in the
Democratic Party campaigning for a Black man. I doubt that any of them
are any less racist than they were ten years ago; but what they doubt is
that another pale face will be able to save their rotten racist system.
Again: what we should be doing is not discussing which candidates to
support in an electoral game, but what kind of revolution is necessary.
Fear as much as you would Greek folk bearing gifts of antidemocratic
rhetoric. Screening presidential candidates via preference primaries and
caucuses and also state and national party conventions is a least
sinister process for screening those seeking election as chief executive
of the land where sovereign power originates with the people and is
radiated by their elected representatives.
At this point I responded with a post (accidentally deleted) in which I
took issue with the notion of sovereign power originating in the people
rather than the state itself. Identifying myself as an anarchist, I
explained that both capitalism and the state must be done away with and
replaced by as directly democratic as possible, federated, cooperative
society. My debater responded that such a society had already been tried
in the U.S., with the Articles of Confederation, and it hadn’t worked.
He or she then went on tout the saintly glories of Dennis Kucinich.
The Articles of Confederation had nothing to do with anarchism. Whatever
the disagreements may have been between the states at that time, the
Articles nevertheless codified a capitalist and slave-owning society.
What I advocate is replacing the government and capitalism with a
society which I outlined in broad strokes in my previous post.
As to Kucinich, even if he were truly a saint, nevertheless by running
for anything in the Democratic (or Republican) Party, he will do nothing
more than provide a shimmering cover for a capitalist party which stabs
the masses of people in the back. In any case, Kucinich is no saint. His
waffling over the years on a woman’s right to choose is well known. Less
well known is his ambivalent attitude toward political prisoners, in
particular Mumia Abu-Jamal. Almost everyone on the Left, from anarchists
to liberals, will agree that Mumia’s 1982 trial was held in a kangaroo
court. In part to protest this the city of St. Denis in France last year
named a major street after him. This act, of course, set the organised
cops in this country to foaming at the mouth, and they prevailed on the
U.S. House of Representatives on 6 December last year to suspend its
rules to demand that St. Denis revoke its action. Kucinich voted FOR the
resolution. (Parenthetical note: 31 congresspeople courageously voted
against it).
My adversary then sent another message in which he posted a
dictionary-type definition of anarchism, with which I didn’t disagree,
together with a reprint of the entire Articles of Confederation. With
that, the Obama controversy went dormant on this list. However, several
months later it arose again after the the candidates announced the
results of their fundraising.
OBAMA ON A ROLL! The proof is in the pudding! ACTIONS ALWAYS SPEAK
LOUDER THAN WORDS, and what transpired this June 30 for the Obama
presidential campaign speak volumes for anyone who knows a mote about
USA politics! Even though Obama has not and will not accept a single
dime from any high-powerful, super rich and corrupting lobbyist; and
even though his support base include many ordinary common people of all
races and poor small contributors, still he managed to set an “ALL TIME”
record for the most money that a democrat has ever raise in a six month
period—not to mention that he is black, a person with Muslim roots, a
upstart first term Senator, and an opposer to the Iraq war! This indeed
is phenomenal, and a sign that indeed Obama’s campaign is a force to be
reckoned with! He said that he has the largest grassroots campaign in
history and now, few can muster the courage to try to dispel or argue
against his claim! Praise God!
Yes, actions do speak louder than words, and the action you describe is
others giving lots of money to his campaign, not what he is actually
doing to carry his programme. Or is his programme raising and spending a
lot of money like the other Republican and Democratic candidates. Our
eyes should be on the prize, which is freedom and dignity, not campaign
contributions, and our actions should follow.
others on the list. He went on to explain:
Please understand me Dear sir, as I must be brief. Dearly beloved Barack
Obama has to steer v-e-r-y cautiously and with a great deal of precision
just as Brother Tiger Woods must keep at a certain level of concentrated
focus such as not to make unnecessary waves which may super inflame
those who are structured in power and purse! The reality is, Barack has
a special mission, and most likely he’ll succeed! He is adept beyond our
imagination for sure, and you can be sure at times he’ll have conflicts
or contradictions in policy lwhich will seem to run counter to what we
as Afro-americans would consider antithetical particularly to our
progress! Winfrey Oprah [sic], even the Beloved Honorable Minister Louis
Farrakhan at times has appeared to do the same in their WORDS. Brother
Barack, the task he has volunteered for is highly ambitious and
dangerous. let us put aside the frivolous criticism of him and get
behind the beloved brother! All for one and one for all—that is, at
least open yourself up to the reality that Barack is FAR more GOOD and
GODLY than bad! Praise the Creator for this Beloved Brother!
responded:
Why are we messing around in the cesspool of electoral politics anyway?
No significant change has ever come about through elections. Slavery
wasn’t abolished that way. Nor was legal segregation. Our unions weren’t
built that way, either. Rather all of those victories were won through
the direct actions of hundreds of thousands of people who risked their
lives and livelihoods in mass struggle.
Just think if everyone of African descent stopped work even for an hour
to protest the garbage which the corporate electoral system presents as
“choices.” The organisation and power of such an action would do ten
thousand times more for freedom, respect and dignity than all of the
mealy-mouthed promises of the corporate candidates.
Rather than speculating as to whether Obama is “angelic” or on some
in-the-closet divine “mission,” our time would be better served by
discussing ideas such as that in the preceding paragraph.
posted the following note:
Is he black enough? This question has been dogging U.S. Senator Barack
Obama since he decided to run for the highest office in the country
earlier this year. Ironically, no one is asking if Hillary Clinton is
female enough or if John Edwards is white enough or if Bill Richardson
is Latino enough.
As for Obama, most people know something of his background, by now. His
mother was white American and his father was Black African. He grew up
in Hawaii and Indonesia. After graduating from Harvard be came to
Chicago to do community organizing and got into politics by way of the
Illinois State Assembly. He unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Congressman
Bobby L. Rush back in 2000. Then he ran for the U.S. Senate and won.
Finally, he announced plans to run for president of the United States
and the campaign coverage became absolutely ridiculous.
Obama must have felt as if he was on an episode of MTV’s Punk’d. Did
your mother’s ancestors own slaves? What color is your Jesus—Black,
white or papersack brown? Do you participate in ALL of Black History
Month? How do you feel about zebras? Do you think they are white with
black stripes or black with white stripes? Here’s a newsflash: some
journalists simply refuse to let good reporting get in the way of a good
story.
Basically, with the question of whether Obama is Black enough, White
America wants to know if Black America trusts and accepts him. Now Black
Americans are asking that very same question, but for a completely
different reason. The implications and connotations of this question are
quite different when passed through the lips of a Black American.
Black people already know he is black enough. Years ago, he married a
sister from the southside of Chicago, he can play the dozens, and gets
his hair cut by a black man in a black barbershop. Enough said. When a
black person asks that question, they really mean “are you gangsta’
enough?” Barack, are you gangsta’ enough to be the first black
president?
For example, Obama, if you were president during Hurricane Katrina would
you have been gangsta’ enough to fly over New Orleans and reach down
with your own two hands to pull people up to safety? If you saw a 400lb
brother on a roof crying for help, would you have said, “he ain’t heavy,
he’s my brother” and snatched him up into Air Force One while wearing a
fresh pair of Nike’s Air Force l’s?
Would you have been gangsta’ enough to open hand slap former FEMA head
Michael D. Brown across the face on national television? “Brownie,
you’re doing a horrible job!” WHAM! Would you have blasted the media
outlets who said white survivors were finding food while black survivors
were looters? That’s what black people want to know.
The biggest cause for concern that I have is that Obama graduated from
Harvard. Now here’s an institution that has messed up more black folks
than crack cocaine! A crackhead has more sense than most Harvard
educated black men.
I’ll prove it. If a crackhead and a young Harvard educated black man
were standing on the corner waiting for a bus and the police drove up
and said, ya’ll better be off this corner by the time we return. That
crackhead has enough sense to scurry off. But that Harvard man.... “How
dare he talk to me like that? Why, I’m going to call my lawyer. Blah,
blah, blah,” he would say. The next day the headline would read: “Black
man shot by police.” And that crackhead would just shake his head. “That
fool did not have enough sense to leave.”
Clinton knows how to take a punch so she is gangsta’ enough. And as for
Edwards—anyone who can spend $400 on haircut is gangsta’ enough. So
forget the black enough question. Let’s see if Obama will exercise more
sense than a crackhead and be gangsta’ enough to handle his business
like a true playa’.
Why should “Black enough” be made synonymous with “gangsta’ enough” when
the real gangsters reside in the overwhelmingly white office towers of
banks, corporations, hedge funds and government? The real problem with
Obama and all the other candidates, for that matter: (1) lies in their
running for office on the ticket of a capitalist party; (2) diverting
our attention to the illusion that electing candidates to office will
make any kind of real difference in our lives. Instead imagine if
everyone of African descent stopped work for even 15 minutes. That
organized action would go a thousand times farther in winning dignity
and respect than anything Obama could do, even if he won.
Peace,
Bill
Still wondering whether anyone was reading any of this, I felt happy
when someone forwarded my response to another list.