Obama: el primer año

Requested quotes from Amiri Baraka re first 6 months of Obama Presidency, published in «Unity & Struggle» Inaguration’.09 issue by Amiri Baraka.

( a brief «Thesis Offering») : James Early, Director Cultural heritage Policy, Smithsonian
Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Boards of TransAfrica
Forum and Institute for Policy Studies, and Artists and Intellectuals In Defense
of Humanity, U.S. A.

The election of Barack Obama to the highest U.S. government decision-making post indicates three important interrelated realizations:

I.Crisis in normative execution of U.S. liberal democratic capitalist domestic and global politics compelled the U.S. public across the ideological and political spectrum, including ruling elites, to select Obama as the candidate most objectively capable of re-stabilizing American government standards of low-conflict rule over the negotiation of political, socio-economic, and cultural equality and justice at home and abroad. Hope and anticipation across the country and the world are vested in the Obama promise to implement U.S. diplomacy not war, multilateralism not a unipolar U.S. authority, ethical, humane policies, not greed and bloody might, to advance a substantive democracy of participation and improved material and spiritual life in the nation and the world, not progress measured by statistical ups and downs of the laws of Capitalism;

II. Election of an «African American» president—recall the U.S. hypo-descent definition of «Blackness»:»one drop of Black blood like the blood of Jesus makes you whole»– politically smart enough to communicate and to organize his vision and skill set to revitalize U.S. former glory and authority is an epic achievement for people of descent from enslaved Africans who suffered a Crime Against Humanity and who have been barred by constitutional law and social custom from full access and participation in life-defining elements of public and political life. In the context of U.S. racism and global support of injustice, individual achievement and national election of Barack Obama by
diverse U.S. racial groups and socio-economic classes is applauded as global
political and humanistic progress. However, currency of catchphrases «Post-Race Society», «Obama Effect», and «Barack the Magic Negro» illustrate a ontradictory portrait of unfounded idealism, sincere hope, and stark racist realism reflected in the appointed Obama political team and post-election outreach that privileges the financial and political institutions of liberal and conservative elites, exalts middle class status as the key socio-economic index of stability and progress, while employing the «working class» trope as an aspirational goal, and studiously avoiding racial-gender-sexual
orientation-coded institutionalized injustice, poverty, disease, and violence—a sobering picture indeed!

III. Where to from here and how?

Effective new media communication-organizing and on-the-ground community
organizing and contestation in all states and communities about actual domestic
and global policies, constitute the basic methodology that brought forth an
alternate, not radical, policy message and candidate to defeat governance
policies that have led to deterioration in life quality, erosion of civil rights, vile, costly wars, and decline in national prestige. The key social ingredient in the winning equation was a responsive, often very proactive, citizenry.

Building direct and participatory democracy rooted in the most marginalized
sectors in collaboration with Obama liberal elites and popular voting sectors to sustain and expand the debate and demand implementation of progressive domestic and global policy is the task at hand— and doing so consciously with
progressive peoples and governments of the world is more possible now through
the Obama victory «We the national and global people» have fought and voted for.