Oh, what a night

Tues. May 6th was a resounding victory for Sen. Barak Obama in North Carolina and Indiana primary elections, particularly in light of the firestorm around Rev. Jeremiah Wright that Obama's campaign withstood over the last four weeks.

The day before the May 6th primary, several television news program pundits considered both races as potential toss ups, speculating on what would happen if Clinton won both primaries or if Obama won both primaries, usually adding that Indiana was expected to go for Clinton. And it did--but by a slim margin of about 22,000+ votes, less of a margin than the number of people that attend some Obama rallies.

Despite the suggestion routinely lobbied at Obama--that he cannot close the deal--it is really Clinton who needed a knock out punch last night to convince superdelegates that she has a reason to continue to put the Democratic Party through more divisive campaigning. Clinton failed last night to do that. Since South Carolina, her campaigning has depended on fanning the fumes of racial division, stirring up animosity, resentment and fear among the electorate where these attitudes can most easily be ignited, among poor white uneducated.

The race-baiting tactics of the Clintons' and their supporters are despicable ("who do you want to answer the telephone at 3:00am?"; Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina; Obama would not still be in the race if he were white; Obama is winning because he is Black; next Obama will brag that he has not stolen cars; calling Obama "kid" and "that boy.")

By pursuing a desparate strategy of playing to racial bias, the Clintons spit in the face of Black voters, the faithful Democratic electorate that validated Bill and delivered him and Hillary to the White House in the first place. In 1992, it was not Saturday Night Live but The Arsenio Hall Show that launched Bill after his saxophone solo, which should be a lesson to the Black electorate not to sell its soul for a song.

Last night was the end for The Clintons; even Hillary's speech last night sounded in part like a swan song. Although she has not conducted herself respectably so far, Hillary Clinton should sound the first note of harmony to unify the Democratic Party by graciously exiting the primary campaign today.

Obama gave as close an acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination last night as he could. Clearly buoyed by his North Carolina victory, his confidence, energy and call for Americans to take back America was as appealing and inspiring as ever. Obama from the beginning has had the message that most Americans want to hear, the message that speaks to our hurt over the country's 8-year deterioration under Bush and our desire for the arc of democracy-for-all to once again lean toward justice and opportunity for every citizen.

Barak Obama should launch a salvo at McCain today, and by doing so, decisively declare the beginning of the general election campaign. Then, go on to run the campaign that he wants to run, and win in November.
Updated Thurs May 8

Sen. Obama - in his own words, Meet the Press 5/4/08

When asked what happened between the support he expressed for Rev. Wright in his remarkable Philadelphia speech in March and his renouncement of the Chicago pastor last Tues. (4/29) in North Carolina, Sen Barak Obama, speaking on Meet the Press (Sun. 5/4/08), said that Rev. Wright "amplified and defended" the controversial remarks he had made in the past instead of taking the opportunity to build unity.

Sen. Obama continued, saying "that told me [Rev. Wright] was intentional in making comments that offend, but it also told me he is willing to distract our country and what [my campaign] is trying to do."

"In March I did what I thougt was right--denounce the worlds not denounce the man. What [Rev. Wright's] National Press Conference performance told me is that [Rev. Wright] was going to double down on divisive comments...."

Same cloth, different pattern

After a reasonable presentation before the Detroit NAACP annual program Sunday night, surprisingly televised by CNN, Rev. Jeremiah Wright turned the page on pragmatism and poise the next morning, when he wrote a new chapter in his national profile through a presentation that included dramatic posturing and cockiness on Monday morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Defending and defining himself in light of the media-crazed defamation he has endured?
Injured and insulted by Sen. Obama's earlier denouncement of 30-second sound bytes from his sermons?
A Hillary supporter in sheep's clothing?
An opportunist?

Whatever his motivations, Rev. Wright (on Monday, 4/28) may have done what Obama has not ably done, even in his second denouncement on Tuesday, and that is draw an obvious distinction between himself and Rev. Wright.

Whether one supports Obama or not, it is hard to swallow that the hopeful, high-minded and uplifting Obama is overly influenced intellectually or philosophically by Rev. Wright. Sen. Obama and Rev. Wright share a Christian heritage, cultural and gender profiles, geographic domicile. Obama may be inspired by Rev. Wright's sermons on Jesus, but give Jesus the praise for that. He may also be strengthened by the African cultural framework in which Rev. Wright expounds on the Judeo-Christian heritage.

However, for the purposes of the American electorate deciding how much of its votes for Obama are also votes for the Chicago minister, Rev. Wright has done the most effective job of demonstrating that, though threads of their lives run within the same cloth, he and Sen. Obama are not cut in the same pattern.

Serious in Detroit-Rev. Wright

In contrast to CNN commentator Soledad O'Brien's comments that his speech was not serious, Rev. Jeremiah Wright was serious in his address to the 2008 Detroit Freedom Fund dinner on Sunday, April 27th. Ms. O'Brien mistook Rev. Wright's use of humor--a tried and true technique employed to communicate and educate an audience--as the gist of his remarks.

In fact, Rev. Wright was deliberate in continually pointing out the very serious and significant perspective that Black American cultural styles of learning, expression and view points differ--but are not deficient--from that of White Americans.

Rev. Wright pointed out that the NAACP and the Black Church have historically worked in concert to address the white-dominated attitudes and the nation's laws that saw Blacks "treated as less than human or treated as second class citizens," he said.

The examples that drew humor--the difference between Africans and Europeans in rhythmic timing while clapping, singing, or stepping in college marching bands--helped to set up his more serious point, that is the distinctions between Black American religious tradition, our relationship to God as a liberator and deliverer, not only from this earthly life but a Saviour while we are in this earthly life. A deliverer from the physical bondage and social oppression Black suffered historically and that we contend with today.

Elitist

Elitist?

What about President Bill Clinton? His fascination with the Kennedy aristocracy, shamelessly exploited during his term in office, was over the top, embarrasing really.

Remember the photo of President Bill Clinton standing next to Jacqueline Kennedy, sailing off Martha's Vineyard. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Ted Kennedy, standing on deck in the background, stared awkwardly away from the romanticized "first couple."

The Bluest Eye

Lydia Diamond’s adaptation of the novel, The Bluest Eye, is an emotionally concentrated play in one act developed from the novel that first introduced readers to its author Toni Morrison in 1971.

Morrison’s novel, which has become a classic widely read in academia, lays bare how social steriotypes and attitudes about beauty crippled the spiritual, emotional and social well-being of Black girls--and Black people.

BookTalk discussion of The Bluest Eye

At the center of The Bluest Eye, both the novel and Lydia Diamond’s successful adaptation, is the phenomenon of racial color—more precisely how skin color in American society is used to perpetuate a racial caste system in which dark-skinned little girls, and boys, quickly absorb the message that they are ugly, undesirable and worthless misfits.


Facilitator Kerry L. Beckford and Margaret Penn

This is the message that young Pecola Breedlove, the central character, has absorbed in the mid-1940s of her small Ohio town. In an early scene of the play, Pecola sits slightly off center stage with legs crossed, hands clenched, head tilted upward and eyes closed, pleading to God to make her invisible—or to give her precious blue eyes, like the adorable Hollywood child star, Shirley Temple. At the foundation of that prayer is the hope that people, Black and white, will see her, look at her, affirm her humanity.


The unfolding scenes portray how Pecola’s mother, father, friends and the community each act out their own pain, contributing to Pecola’s debilitating end. Photo: Playwrights Richard Fewell and Lydia Diamond talk at Hartford Stage

Director Eric Ting carefully choreographed innovative staging including utilizing linen sheets to create walls and devising a riveting scene that showers water upon an actress in a crucial moment in the play.


The Bluest Eye opened its CT run in Hartford in February 2008 and continued its run at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, through April 20, 2008.

How the Montgomery Bus Boycott can drive more purpose into the new social justice movement

" They knew why they walked, and the knowledge was evident in the way they carried themselves. And as I watched them I knew that there was nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity."

The economic "Black out" proposed for this week has generated much discussion from some who are in adamant support and others in opposition, if not to the boycott itself then to what they suggest is an action too short in its proposed duration or incomplete in explanation of its potential impact.

In discussing the "Black out," some people mention the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the most effective economic social action conducted at the start of what became the Civil Rights Movement.

The Black citizens, business and religious leaders planned that boycott of the Montgomery bus system spontaneously, between a Friday and Sunday, after hearing of Mrs. Rosa Parks arrest on December 1, 1955 for not giving up her seat to a white man. The boycott was planned for the first work day of the following week, which was Monday, December 5, 1955.

Like the proposed "Black out" Friday, November 2nd of this year, the 1955 boycott was generated by outrage at acts of “over-prosecution” and social injustice, at that time represented by Mrs. Parks’ arrest, which was then the latest social injustice in a long series of injustices that Black citizens had suffered in Montgomery, and across the country.

It is instructive to consider that over the course of three days the Montgomery organizers put together a plan, publicized the action, and successfully carried off the first day of the boycott, even in the face of expressed doubts about the duration of the boycott and potential impact of the plan.

The story of that year-long boycott is told in Stride Toward Freedom, a memoir of the nearly day-to-day activities of the Montgomery bus boycott, written by a young Baptist preacher elected to the movement's leadership, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The story is a must read for Black Americans, all Americans really, a view from the first hand account of Dr. King how a system of entrenched discrimination sabotages the social and economic progress of its victims, and how a people unified by higher ideals of self-determination and dignity overcame legalized oppression through sustained and determined effort.

It may be surprising to some that over the harried weekend of planning, Dr. King struggled with the idea of "boycott." At that time, some persons compared the proposed bus boycott with similar boycotts conducted throughout the South by the racists White Citizen Councils with the purpose of denying goods and services to the Black community--and Whites of good will. Dr. King was certain that their discrimination was evil but questioned, as some do today, whether participating in a boycott was not as immoral as bigoted White groups. Was a boycott a negative action, when what was intended was a positive action, “to give birth to justice and freedom, and to urge men to cooperate with the law of the land...,” he asked.

He reconciled his struggle in recalling Henry David Thoreau's “Essay on Civil Disobedience.” The answer for Dr. King was non-cooperation. He wrote:

“When oppressed people willingly accept their oppression they only serve to give the oppressor a convenient justification for his acts. ... So, in order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system. This I felt was the nature of our action. From this moment on I conceived of our movement as an act of massive noncooperation. From then on I rarely used the word, "boycott."

Finally, Monday, December 5th arrived. Dr. King and the organizers waited to see what would happen. Would the Black Montgomery citizens unify, would the boycott be a success?

Dr. King and the other Black leaders had hoped for about 60% cooperation of the people. Early on Monday morning, Dr. King wrote, he and Mrs. King were up and dressed by 5:30am, waiting to see the first buses of the morning ride by their street. Soon, looking out their living room window, they saw an empty bus ride by--a bus normally filled with domestic workers.

"I jumped in my car and for almost an hour I cruised down every major street and examined every passing bus. During this hour at the peak of morning traffic, I saw no more than eight Negro passengers riding the buses." Jubilant, Dr. King said he realized that instead of 60% cooperation the Black community of Montgomery was participating at nearly 100%.

One of the most powerful passages of Stride Toward Freedom is Dr. King's description of the beautiful sight of men and women participating on that first day of the "massive noncooperation," which was sustained through the rest of 1955:

"During the rush hours the sidewalks were crowded with laborers and domestic workers, many of them well past middle age, trudging patiently to their jobs and home again, sometimes as much as twelve miles. They knew why they walked, and the knowledge was evident in the way they carried themselves. And as I watched them I knew that there was nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity."

Reviewing our past efforts in the wake of new social actions is educational, unifying and inspiring. In the next few days, as people plan their participation, we recommend that participants in the "Black out" get together and read aloud selections from our historical record of social protests. This activity will frame the current purpose with historical perspective, inspire unity, strengthen resolve and help to ensure sustained success in this new effort and those we engage in in the future.

Doesn't have to be a physical gathering. Send quotes by email, text message or just pick up the telephone. Each one, reach one; each one, teach one, our history, our inherited legacy, and our responsibility to one another.

For this week, we recommend Stride Toward Freedom, the first book selection for BookTalk, our online reading group focused on social action texts. We will post a date for an online discussion of the book soon.

Send us your recommedations for other books to include in the quarterly BookTalk discussion.

Peace