I would like to dedicate the post below to Melinda and various other
Pacifica "activists".
However this has nothing whatsoever to do with the "Pacifica Foundation"
since the real world has nothing to do with Pacifica - at least since the
Salvation of Pacifica and the Re- or Neo-Salvation of Pacifica and the struggle
to Save Pacifica once again. .
Jim "Salvation seems to be a very temporary thing at Pacifica." D.
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From: Amirib@xxxxxxx
The Parade of Anti-Obama Rascals
We certainly know the animals of the right, the US Reich, the
Foxes and Klan in Civilian clothes, e.g., O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh &c and
certainly a coon or two Tavis & Andy, some people even came up with the slogan
Strangle Rangel. Happily w/the departure of Bonnie & Clyde more of these Negro
retainers will replace their “ HillJig” buttons with the shit eating grin of
exposed Toms as they try to ease painlessly into at least the margin of the
masses who support Obama .
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. You might say, ‘but how is that, since now there
is only the prisoner of war, McCain , whose proves every time he opens his
mouth that he is still a prisoner of the Viet Nam 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 Viet nam 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.
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.
Faced with the obvious that McKinney cannot actually do
anything by running but put out lines a solid left bloc shd put out anyway,
their pre-joinder is that Obama will be running as a candidate of an
imperialist party, or Imperialism will not let Obama do anything different or
progressive…that he will do the same things any democrat would do and that the
Democrats are using Obama to draw young people to the Democratic party. Also
that there is a sector of the bourgeoisie supports Obama to put a new face on
the US as alternative to the Devil face Bush has projected as the American
image.
Some of these things I agree with, but before qualifying that
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.
And at this point, the US body politic has been taken too far
in this present election campaign to easily dissolve this heavy challenge to
its historic race & class exclusivity. The positive aspect of Hillary Clinton’s
candidacy and commitment to work in the Obama campaign has certainly shredded
some of the gender exclusivity as well, so that there is in reality a prospect
that some substantive change can be made. Obama is the democratic nominee. Only
repeats of the outright election theft of Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 can
put McCain in the white house. In 2 weeks, since the Democratic Party primaries
ended, McCain’s poll numbers have dropped from a dead heat w/ Obama to trailing
by 18 points.
It is up to revolutionaries and progressives and radicals of all
stripes to make it difficult for another larceny in November. We should agitate
for serious disruption across this country and internationally if such a
criminal attempt to steal the US presidency is mounted.
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.
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.
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!
Obama has addressed the Israeli lobby and the Gusano (anti
Cuba) lobby. 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.
There were even a few badly disguised nationalists, posing as part
of the left who think such posturing somehow more revolutionary than getting
Obama into the oval office and dealing with getting him there and the rocking
and rolling that will go on in this country whether he makes it or not. We
ought to be putting together a left bloc document that can be circulated as
soon and as widely as possible and in Denver and depending on the
circumstances, beyond. Using this as a means of drawing the excited masses to
the left.
We always knew that the Obama campaign had the potential to do this.
And the closer we get to the convention and then the election even more
excitement will be generated. We shd not let our role be to stand on the
sidelines and mumble how hip we are, we can’t be so hip we let this cross roads
of US history pass us by and possibly even let the lobotomized Robocop of right
wing Republicanism serve us up more Bush’ it.
I am sending this document right after I finish writing it
to the Black Radical Congress who is meeting in St. Louis this weekend. I would
hope it could be circulated.
Amiri Baraka 6/21/08