What About the Black Community, Obama?
by
Diop Olugbala, International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement
"When
Obama speaks to black audiences, he attacks us."
On Friday, August 1st I led a contingent of the Uhuru
Movement into Barack Obama's town hall meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida
to raise the question: "What about the black community, Obama?" Without the
benefit of a big media budget, our organization attempted to bring the serious
issues experienced by African working class people across this country into the
national political debate.
These issues include the targeting of African and Latino communities with
predatory "sub-prime" mortgages - a scheme that has made millions for people
like Obama's chief financial advisor Penny Pritzker,
while stripping black families of billions of dollars, the greatest
loss of wealth our community has suffered since being brought in chains to
this country. We also challenged Obama to take a stand against the police
shootings of unarmed African people, and explain why he has publicly
defended the judge's acquittal of the NYC police who murdered Sean Bell.
He has said that he cannot speak out on behalf of those who have been historically
oppressed for fear of offending other people. Yet in Miami, he promised the
Jewish community, which considers itself a historically oppressed community,
that he supports turning all
of Jerusalem over to Israeli control, despite the internationally enforced
sharing of that city with the Palestinians. When Obama speaks to black
audiences, he attacks us, attributing our community's poverty, not to systemic
oppression, but to bad culture and lack of work ethic.
"We
also challenged Obama to take a stand against the police shootings of unarmed
African people."
Barack Obama has criticized African fathers for abandoning
our children, although a recent study showed that black fathers stay more
involved with their children after a split from the mother than white fathers.
And Obama says nothing of the unjust imprisonment of 1 in 9 black men of
child-bearing age, the overwhelming majority of whom are locked up on minor
drug or other non-violent economic violations stemming from conditions of
desperate poverty. He has failed to achieve any meaningful program of economic
development for the African community. In speaking to a group of black
legislators, Obama said "a good economic development plan for our community
would be if we make sure folks weren't throwing their garbage out of their
cars."
Barack Obama wants to increase military spending and praised Clinton for
abolishing AFDC and welfare. He has reversed his position opposing the death
penalty and speaks out against reparations. He wants to escalate the U.S.
military presence in Afghanistan and has threatened Venezuela and Iran with
military aggression. He has upheld the FISA, supporting wire-tapping and
government spying on citizens. He receives unprecedented financial backing from
Wall Street. His close advisors and potential cabinet members include war
criminal Richard Clarke, Tri-lateral commission founder Zbigniev Brzezinski,
Madeleine ‘it's worth the price of 1 million dead Iraqi children' Albright, and
Free Trade advocates Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee.
Some argue that we must support Obama or else we are supporting McCain. We in
the Uhuru Movement don't believe our community should restrict our political
options to a choice between one white ruling class party or another. In fact,
the black community's most recent experiences in the U.S. electoral arena have
resulted not only in the Republican Party's theft of our votes, but prior to
that we suffered some of the worst attacks on our community at the hands of the
Democratic Party administration of William Jefferson Clinton, who put 100,000
more police on our streets to murder our people, privatized the prisons to
exploit our unpaid labor, and discontinued the public subsidies for
impoverished children and families that had been won by African people as a
concession to our movement of the 1960s.
"African people's votes should be contingent on
the willingness of a candidate to support and fight for our agenda."
African people's experiences with these last several elections and the
desperate conditions facing our community have created a willingness by our
people to seek independent political alternatives. In response to this crisis,
the white rulers put forward Barack Obama - a pied piper taking African people
back into clutches of the Democratic Party. If anyone looks seriously at the
positions, programs and advisors of Barack Obama, they will see that he does
not stand for any kind of real change, but for the defense of the same old
status quo, with a new face. America is in an economic crisis and the white
ruling class hopes to save itself by deepening the exploitation of African
people in the U.S. and on the continent of Africa, where the world's biggest
reserves of oil and precious minerals lie. How better to do it than with an
African face at the head of state?
Our success as a people requires that we achieve our own independent political
agenda. African people's votes should be contingent on the willingness of a
candidate to support and fight for that agenda. The International People's
Democratic Uhuru Movement has invited Barack Obama, John McCain and Cynthia
McKinney to attend our annual convention on September 27-28 in St. Petersburg,
Florida to clarify their position on the question, "what about the black
community?" Based on their response, we will consider endorsement of a
U.S. presidential candidate.
Diop Olugbala is the International Organizer for the International People's
Democratic Uhuru Movement. He can be contacted through their website, www.inpdum.org.
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