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Good, and Now Back To Work
November 06, 2008
By
Tim Wise
Source: SleptOn
Tim Wise's ZSpace Page
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Tonight, after Barack Obama was confirmed as the nation's president-elect, I looked in on my children, as they lay sleeping. Though they are about as politically astute as kids can be, having reached only the ages of 7 and 5, there is no way they will be able to truly appreciate what has just happened in the land they call home. They do not possess the sense of history, or indeed, even a clear understanding of what history means, so as to adequately process what happened this evening, as they slumbered. Even as our oldest cast her first grade vote for Obama in school today, and even as our youngest has become somewhat notorious for pointing to pictures of Sarah Palin on magazines and saying, "There's that crazy lady who hates polar bears," they remain, still, naive as to the nation they have inherited. They do not really understand the tortured history of this place, especially as regards race. Oh they know more than most--to live as my children makes it hard not to--but still, the magnitude of this occasion will likely not catch up to them until Barack Obama is finishing at least his first, if not his second term as president.
But that's OK. Because I know what it means, and will make sure to tell them.
And before detailing what I perceive that meaning to be (both its expansiveness and limitations) let me say this, to some of those on the left--some of my friends and longtime compatriots in the struggle for social justice--who yet insist that there is no difference between Obama and McCain, between Democrats and Republicans, between Biden and Palin: Screw you.
If you are incapable of mustering pride in this moment, and if you cannot appreciate how meaningful this day is for millions of black folks who stood in lines for up to seven hours to vote, then your cynicism has become such an encumbrance as to render you all but useless to the liberation movement. Indeed, those who cannot appreciate what has just transpired are so eaten up with nihilistic rage and hopelessness that I cannot but think that they are a waste of carbon, and actively thieving oxygen that could be put to better use by others.
This election does indeed matter. No, it is not the same as victory against the forces of injustice, and yes, Obama is a heavily compromised candidate, and yes, we will have to work hard to hold him accountable. But it matters nonetheless that he, and not the bloodthirsty bomber McCain, or the Christo-fascist, Palin, managed to emerge victorious.
Those who say it doesn't matter weren't with me on the south side of Chicago this past week, surrounded by a collection of amazing community organizers who go out and do the hard work every day of trying to help create a way out of no way for the marginalized. All of them know that an election is but a part of the solution, a tactic really, in a larger struggle of which they are a daily part; and none of them are so naive as to think that their jobs are now to become a cakewalk because of the election of Barack Obama. But all of them were looking forward to this moment. They haven't the luxury of believing in the quixotic campaigns of Dennis Kucinich, or waiting around for the Green Party to get its act together and become something other than a pathetic caricature, symbolized by the utterly irrelevant and increasingly narcissistic presence of Ralph Nader on the electoral scene. And while Cynthia McKinney remains a pivotal figure in the struggle, the party to which she was tethered this year shows no more ability to sustain movement activity than it was eight years ago, and most everyone working in oppressed communities in this nation knows it.
It's like this y'all: Jesse Jackson was weeping openly on national television. This is a man who was with Dr. King when he was murdered and he was bawling like a baby. So don't tell me this doesn't matter.
John Lewis--who had his head cracked open, has been arrested more times, and has probably spilled far more blood for the cause of justice than all the white, dreadlocked, self-proclaimed anarchists in this country combined--couldn't be more thrilled at what has happened. If he can see it, then frankly, who the hell are we not to?
Those who say this election means nothing, who insist that Obama, because he cozied up to Wall Street, or big business, is just another kind of evil no different than any other, are in serious risk of political self-immolation, and it is a burning they will richly deserve. That the victorious presidential candidate is actually a capitalist (contrary to the fevered imaginations of the right) is no more newsworthy than the fact that rain falls down and grass grows skyward. It is to be properly placed in the "no shit Sherlock," file. That anyone would think it possible for someone who didn't raise hundreds of millions of dollars to win--at this time in our history at least--only suggests that some on the left would prefer to engage politics from a place of aspirational innocence, rather than in the real world, where battles are won or lost.
So let us be clear as to what tonight meant:
It was a defeat for the right-wing echo chamber and its rhetorical stormtroopers, foremost among them Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.
It was a defeat for the crazed mobs ever-present at McCain/Palin rallies, what with their venomous libels against Obama, their hate-addled brains spewing forth one after another racist and religiously chauvinistic calumny upon his head and those of his supporters.
It was a defeat for the internet rumor-pimps who insisted to all they could reach with a functioning e-mail address that Obama was not really a citizen. Or perhaps he was, but he was a Muslim, or perhaps not a Muslim, but probably a black supremacist, or maybe not that either, but surely the anti-christ, and most definitely a baby-killer.
It was a defeat for those who believed McCain and Palin would be delivered the victory by the hand of almighty God, because their theological and eschatological vacuity so regularly gets in the way of their ability to think. As such, it was a setback for the religious fascists in the far-right Christian community whose belief that God is on their side has always made them especially dangerous. Now, having lost, perhaps at least some of these will be forced to ponder what went wrong. If we're lucky, perhaps some will suffer the kind of crisis of faith that often prefaces a complete nervous breakdown. Either way, it's nice just to ruin their Young-Earth-Creationist-I-Have-an-Angel-on-My-Shoulder day.
It was a defeat for the demagogues who tried in so many ways to push the buttons of white racism--the old-fashioned kind, or what I call Racism 1.0--by using thinly-veiled racialized language throughout the campaign. Appeals to Joe Six-Pack, "values voters," blue-collar voters, or hockey moms, though never explicitly racialized, were transparent to all but the most obtuse, as were terms like "terrorist" when used to describe Obama. Likewise, the attempt to race-bait the economic crisis by blaming it on loans to poor folks of color through the Community Reinvestment Act, or community activists like the folks at ACORN, failed, and this matters. No, it doesn't mean that white America has rejected racism. Indeed, I have been quite deliberate for months about pointing out the way that racism 1.0 may be traded in only to be replaced by racism 2.0 (which allows whites to still view most folks of color negatively but carve out exceptions for those few who make us feel comfortable and who we see as "different"). And yet, that tonight was a drubbing for that 1.0 version of racism still matters.
And tonight was a victory for a few things too.
It was a victory for youth, and their social and political sensibilities. It was the young, casting away the politics of their parents and even grandparents, and turning the corner to a new day, perhaps naively, and too optimistic about the road from here, but nonetheless in a way that has historically almost always been good for the country. Much as youth were inspired by a relatively moderate John F. Kennedy (who was, on balance, far less progressive than Obama in many ways), and much as they then formed the frontline troops for so much of the social justice activism of the following fifteen years, so too can such a thing be forseen now. That Kennedy may have been quite restrained in his social justice sensibilities did not matter: the young people whose energy he helped unleash took things in their own direction and outgrew him rather quickly in their progression to the left.
Tonight was also a victory for the possibility of greater cross-racial alliance building. Although Obama failed to win most white votes, and although it is no doubt true that many of the whites who did vote for him nonetheless hold to any number of negative and racist stereotypes about the larger black and brown communities of this nation, it it still the case that black, brown and white worked together in this effort as they have rarely done before. And many whites who worked for Obama, precisely because they got to see, and hear, and feel the racist vitriol still animating far too many of our nation's people, will now be wiser for the experience when it comes to understanding how much more work remains to be done on the racial justice front. Let us build on that newfound knowledge, and that newfound energy, and create real white allyship with community-based leaders of color as we move forward in the years to come.
But now for the other side of things.
First and foremost, please know that none of these victories will amount to much unless we do that which needs to be done so as to turn a singular event about one man, into a true social movement (which, despite what some claim, it is not yet and has never been).
And so it is back to work. Oh yes, we can savor the moment for a while, for a few days, perhaps a week. But well before inauguration day we will need to be back on the job, in the community, in the streets, where democracy is made, demanding equity and justice in places where it hasn't been seen in decades, if ever. Because for all the talk of hope and change, there is nothing--absolutely, positively nothing--about real change that is inevitable. And hope, absent real pressure and forward motion to actualize one's dreams, is sterile and even dangerous. Hope, absent commitment is the enemy of change, capable of translating to a giving away of one's agency, to a relinquishing of the need to do more than just show up every few years and push a button or pull a lever.
This means hooking up now with the grass roots organizations in the communities where we live, prioritizing their struggles, joining and serving with their constituents, following leaders grounded in the community who are accountable not to Barack Obama, but the people who helped elect him. Let Obama follow, while the people lead, in other words.
For we who are white it means going back into our white spaces and challenging our brothers and sisters, parents, neighbors, colleagues and friends--and ourselves--on the racial biases that still too often permeate their and our lives, and making sure they know that the success of one man of color does not equate to the eradication of systemic racial inequity.
So are we ready for the heavy lifting? This was, after all, merely the warm up exercise, somewhat akin to stretching before a really long run. Or perhaps it was the first lap, but either way, now the baton has been handed to you, to us. We must not, cannot, afford to drop it. There is too much at stake.
The worst thing that could happen now would be for us to go back to sleep; to allow the cool poise of Obama's prose to lull us into slumber like the cool on the underside of the pillow. For in the light of day, when fully awake, it becomes impossible not to see the incompleteness of the task so far.
So let us begin.
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Comments
Carl trashing anarchs - of course
By Street, Paul
Okay Matthew - no problem.
Very unpleasant but unsurprising to see Carl trashing anarchists as window-smashers. I doubt they're as messed up as he says in Pitt. Here in Iowa City, the left anarchs do very effective organizing work. They did great demonstration and activity planning for the RNC protests in St. Paul. All kinds of great local initiatives on food for the homeless, anti-racism, ecological alternatives, antiwar....etc.
The anarchs here get the same terrible Davidson smear here from overly election-focused politics "liberal" "progressives" (the early Caucus makes the election- and candidate-addiction especially powerful in Iowa), who really are very childishly in love with their Dali Obama. The left anarchs (not all "kids" BTW) I know around here -- along with with one non-academic (non-armchair) Marxist I am aware of --- are the only ones with a healthy sense of the corporate-imperial reality beneath the progressive facade of "Brand Obama". They are much better than the Obamaists and Democrats in general at every level.
The media runs with the "window-smashers" line (that's all televison and newspapers around here had to report on left activity during the RNC --- total crap) and Uncle Carl is all too ready to play along. Of course. Its all very continuous (in an authoritarian-Lenninist sort of way) with the earlier political history he relates. The small shift from authoritarian Maoism-Lenninism to corporate-imperial Obamaism makes perfect sense.
Re: Re: Corrections
By Davidson, Carl
And you may not have heard of me here, but I'm born and bred here. Family everywhere, since apart from the Indians, they were the first settlers. And plenty of other connections in working class circles. I report on my work to Pittsburgh Indymedia, but not much activity there in response to me, or much else, for that matter. The Beaver County Times, where I post regularly, is much livelier and more real
Re: Corrections
By Davidson, Carl
Same ole me, Donahue. Except I was never in the CPUSA, but the CPML and later the LRS. And Beaver County was a key battle ground, and my Raccoon Township, 99% white workers, went 48% Obama, 52% McCain, which we consider a major step forward, since we did at or better than the national average, and more important we have an expanded, multiracial group of workers fired but and continuing the struggle. We're now pushing to end the war, cut the Pentagon and rebuild the locks and dams of the Ohio to build Green infratructure so barges cattying wind tubines can move through them. Because of our work in this campaign, we're in a good positions with the unions to do so. The anarchist youth up at Pitt can only break more store windows and play tag with cops in the streets. They can stay there. To me, the choice to do the work here is the road ahead.
Re: Do not put words in my mouth and self-promotion in my pen
By Schuld, Matthew
Mr. Street,
I read over again. You're right, you didn't use that phrase. Upon reading all these posts over again I admit my petty comment was hasty and non-constructive, for which I apologize.
To clarify, my point was never to argue that intellectuals like Chomsky "shouldn't be consulted." My point is that they should not be waved around as "intellectual heavyweights" to stifle the arguments of others without actually addressing specific issues.
Since my "intellectual heavyweight" comment was an illegitimate criticism of your statements, perhaps this is resolved.
Do not put words in my mouth and self-promotion in my pen
By Street, Paul
Mathew and Samuel - glad we agree on some core premises and observations but I went back and looked at my opening comments and I've got to say Matthew that the charge of self-promotion is off-base. I told CD to read my book in the context of my difference with his position. It's totally legitemate. The book happens to be the best place activists (and others) trying to grasp and the Obama phenomenon can quickly go to get an efficient and comprehensive history.
(Want some actual self-promotion? See this link)
Now, mentioning the book to Carl know -it-all Davidson is in retrospect a waste of time...I admit that. He's a hack.
Also I can't find where I used the phrase "intellectual heavyweights" and don't think I used it here but my eyes are burned out on all this tiny font.
Okay. checked again - didn;t use the phrase.
Please do not put words in my mouth.
But since you brought up "intellectual heavyweights," it seems odd and, well, anti-intellectual, to have some sort of problem with the notion that they exist and to suggest that they shouldn't be consulted. Michael Jordan and Larry Bird were basketball heavyweights and people who want to know how to play basketbal should consult some of MJ and Bird's tapes and hear their comments on how to play..
Those names you mentioned ---- Chomsky, Pilger, Mills --- are left-intellectual heavyweights (there's a lot more) and it is a little foolish to think you can ignore them (and the work of other serious left thinkers) and be a reasonably informed progressive. I think people should read Wise's books on race.
I just don't get the tone on intellectuals here.
Re:
By Schuld, Matthew
I agree with you. He opposes it in the same way the "doves" opposed the Vietnam. Paraphrasing from a Chomsky article on the topic, "Our benevolent aims were foiled by the Asian ambivalence to death." I shouldn't have said "credited." I should have said, "favored over Hillary Clinton or McCain."
By Richards, Samuel
"I too would not call him an anti-war candidate; although, it seems he should be credited for opposing the Iraq War. If he does not follow through on ending the war, seeks to maintain bases in Iraq, or does not pay reparations to Iraq then he would rapidly become undeserving of our praise. "
Even on these points Obama has already failed. His initial opposition to the war was pragmatic: it might cost us too much; it wasn't sound imperial policy; it was a "mistake." A principled opposition would oppose the war even if it cost us nothing, was sound imperial policy, and wasn't a mistake. Besides, after the war started, Obama admitted that there wasn't much difference between his position and Bush's. Also, his presidential platform endorsed maintaining the Green Zone with a "residual force" left behind to combat terror, which would likely require tens of thousands of US military and or private mercenaries. On the last point, Obama opposes reparations. He said we should stop trying to put Iraq back together, and condemned the Iraqi gov't for its surplus. He doesn't even believe in the US apologizing for its crimes in Iraq.
So, he hasn't failed to meet any of these conditions; he simply never planned to even try. His "anti-war" status is a farce derived from one speech he gave in 2002 and repudiated by dozens pro-war votes and statements since.
I agree with your point about intellectual heavyweights though. I think Wise is just being a little hysterical if he condemns these heavyweights who, while recognizing the symbolic victory in a black president's election, nevertheless fail to feel pride in the election of a timid, corporate and neo-liberal candidate.
An Obama victory has some significance (at least in my mind).
By Schuld, Matthew
Re: Word to the Wise
By Tchiguka, Muata
I agree, Paul. What really made my blood boil about Tim Wise's article was the following:
"If you are incapable of mustering pride in this moment, and if you cannot appreciate how meaningful this day is for millions of black folks who stood in lines for up to seven hours to vote, then your cynicism has become such an encumbrance as to render you all but useless to the liberation movement."
I am a black American, and I'm "incapable of mustering pride" with an Obama presidency. So I guess I'm cynical according to Mr. Wise. He wants me to be proud of the fact that Obama employed negative racial narratives about black Americans to garner the white conservative vote just to get to the White House. Cold Popeyes chicken, anyone? And this is from a man who fashioned his whole campaign under the banner of race neutrality and transcendence. Mr. Wise wants me to proud that he compromised the civil liberties of American citizens. Well, I must be cynical then.
And black leadership's uncritical support for Obama is unconscionable and unforgivable. Loquacious and enthusiastic Obama supporter Michael Eric Dyson excoriated Bill Cosby and dedicated an entire book against him for his scurrilous assault on the black poor. Yet he was silent when his man did the same. Hypocrisy. Manning Marable actually called him a progressive. Wow! And this is from a man whose scholarship I respect.
Now President-elect Obama has appointed Zionist Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, and is seriously considering sexist and environmental racist Lawrence Summers as Treasury Secretary. Look at the Great Black Hope now.
I believe that Tim Wise is trying to rationalize his support for Obama by lashing out at "the radicals" because he doesn't feel comfortable with Obama, and he knows deep down that we're right. Check out how he name drops John Lewis and Jesse Jackson as justification. A weak argument.
Well, if Mr. Wise wants to relish the moment and feel proud, that's his choice. Just don't try to sell me on it.
Stick with this note to the 1991 Summers memo "y'all"
By Street, Paul
Paul D - it's the same Carl Davidson. Trust me - I know this for a fact. I've spoken at his old creation the Open University of the Left in Chicago on numerous occasions and they told me (in distinctly non-flattering terms) about this guy and how he went out to PA. You can ask him himself. In one of his comments once he talked about moving from Chicago (where he not missed) to Racoon township. He's an old ex-Maoist Racoon from SDS days - a close friend to ex-radical Tom Hayden, who also (like Michael Moore, ridiculously the other day [see "Pinch Me" ZNet Nov.4] and more recently on Z Rebecca Solnit (in a particuarly star-struck piece) calls Obama an "antiwar candidate." Carl Davidson would like nothing more than a good old-fashioned cultural-revolutionary ideological purge of the so-called "anti-Obama" (try anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-racist) "ultra left" (try left). "Barack Obama is an antiwar candidate." Yes, like 2+2=5. Like Love is Hate. There's just no excuse for people not doing some basic due-diligence research on a candidate they embrace...in this case for not readinf some of his readily available speeches on his Web site or his foreign policy chapter in The Audacity of Hope or his essay in Foreign Affairs or.... I'm a big bad mean guy because I say "please read some basic primary sources in the history of the Obama phenomenon!" CD's "Uncle Tom" statement was somewhat ambiguous - there was at least suggestion that I has used the term. "JFK in sepia" is not "worse" than Uncle Tom and is the creation of a left black writer named Michael Hureaux. Davidson boasts of his days as a great white Buddhist-capitalist father to inner city people of color. He used to teach job- and life-skill - "train" them in his urban computer repair shop in Chicago. I did not know Nader's comment was quite like that.. I would not have used his language personally but the substance is accurate: BO has exhibted profound subservience to corporatons and Wall Street (and to the Pentagon and to the foreign policy establishment and to dominant racial norms claiming that racism has been transcernded in the U.S. and no reparations are due). Like all major-party presidential candidates. It's structural: I 'm sure Edwards, who said some astonishing things for a mainstream candidate in 2007 (thereby winning Nader's endorsement BTW) would have bent well to the business center if he had been the nominee (his language was too populist for that to happen of course). Blowing up the public presidential financing system doesn't help BTW. . Glen Ford is a brillliant writer and speaker who knocked out academic super-Obamaist Michael Eric (or is Eric Michael) Dyson on the Amy Goodman Show earlier this year. The vitriolic assaults on the left from the likes of Davidson and Wise deserve vitriol back. I get doing tactical work to defeat the proto-fascistic GOP ("Progressives Against McCain"?) myself, but now they have a choice between (a) turning into Obamaist thugs willing to suppport the Religitimize Empire and Inequality Project at the end of the day (despite claims of underlyingpreogressivism) or (b) being true left progressives. Let me revise that: Wise has a choice. Davidson is too dumb and fixed in his know-it-all ways. Wise is sharp as Hell and young enough to change Joshua: Wise citing Jackson like that was... weird. I'm from Chicago (South Side) and worked as a de facto black political actor (for all intents and purposes --- research and policy director at a bourgeois Urban League affiliate) in the city and state capital and can testify that the Reverend's opportunism (beginning with dipping his shirt in Dr. King's [or somebody's] blood and waving it around Chicago in 1968) and uber-narcissism is legendary there. King had huge misgivings about Jackson BTW (see David Garrow's award-winning biography Bearing the Cross) . And I agree that standing tall with some tears coming down is not "bawling like a baby." Again, 2+2 = 4, not 5. Oh, before I forget: Rahm Emannuel's Dad recently made a racist comment about Arabs in explaining that "of course his son [Obama's new chief of staff --- a big DLC veteran] will be pro-Isreal" (pro-occupation and pro-apartheid). And here is an interesting forgotten memo ("Africa is under-polluted because people don't live very long there anyway") from Lawrence Summers, who Obama is seriously considering for Secreatary of Treasury: DATE: December 12, 1991 "'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:" "1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that." "2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste." "3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable." "The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization." That's one seriously reactionary corporate-imperial motherfucker and he's one of Obama's top economic advisors. And then there's the foreign policy team. .... I don't agree with Carl that power elite research is a wasteful "spectator sport."
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers, Chief Economist of the World Bank
Subject: GEP
Re: solidarity with dark-skinned peoples
By , minot
True cynicism is using the good intentions of millions of voters for the ends of slaughter, subjugation and empire, as Obama has done with the help of those who should know better. To show Wise's recommended solidarity with african-americans, in this case, unfortunately consigns untold Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Lebanese and Palestinians for death by various bloody means. How about some solidarity with these darker-skinned people's? If those to die lived in Mr. Wise's and Mr. Davidson's neighborhoods, instead of in far-off lands, would they be crowing and bragging about the election result?
An Awfully Bad Argument
By Sperber, Joshua
Mr. Wise writes that because a majority of African Americans experienced an emotional response to Obama's election, we (white activists, I presume, although I don't know where this leaves the numerous Black writers who have rejected Obama) must not criticize the new president. This is a bandwagon (i.e. fallacious) argument by proxy -- and we all know that emotional masses can never be wrong. On the contrary, we should subordinate our critical faculties to them... well, not to them, because they actually didn't ask for anything, but to their spokesman, Mr. Wise. But we're given a choice, because you could also subordinate your critical faculties to the emotional spectacle of Jesse Jackson "bawling like a baby," because babies are renowned sources of rational analysis. Except that Jesse Jackson wasn't bawling like a baby. Actually, the longtime Democratic Party hack was merely standing in a dignified way with tears falling down his face -- I am not sure what was going on in Mr. Wise's head for him to convert this into "bawling like a baby." But then this isn't completely what happened. What happened was that corporate television channels recorded this image and broadcast it into people's homes. It is a cue to be moved by the beauty, promise, and hope of the US state, which is attempting to coopt Black liberation, with the gushing help of Black spokespeople like Mr. Wise.
Corrections
By Donahue, Paul
Paul S,
Carl's remark about Obama being called an "Uncle Tom" refers to something Nader said to a FOX news reporter - except that it is a deliberately slanderous distortion of what he actually said. What Nader said, which I would have expected every genuine progressive to agree with, was. "Obama has a choice, he can be Uncle Sam to the American people or an Uncle Tom for the giant corporations".
Sound reasonable to me. Only a white person who has spend no time at all discussing politics with black people would think such a remark was ofensive.
Also, from your remarks, I think you are confusing the Carl Davidson of Chicago - former SDS activist, then CPUSA, late of the UFPJ, with the Carl Davidson posting his remarks here. The Carl here is from Racoon Township (98.7% white, 0.38% Black), Beaver County, Pennsylvania. I have moved around a lot of activist circles here in nearby Pittsburgh but I've never met him.
The extreme post-election vitrolic hate being directed at Mr Nader (and at Cindy Sheehan in the SF Bay Area) by liberals like Mr. Davidson, and is a bizarre and disgusting phenomenon which warrants study all by itself.
Like another commenter said, it is like the old SF B-movie (forgot it's name) where a kids family members fall one by one in the sand holes in some dunes and get alien implants in their brains!
Re: No blind eye
By Davidson, Carl
I would agreed that the BAR crew have got themselves running around in moral and intellectual circles, but not around me!
For starters, ask Ford why he saw fit to praise Howard Dean as a great leader against racism in 2004, then in 2008, turns on a dime to aim his main blows at taking down Obama.
Running in circles, indeed.
No blind eye
By Street, Paul
Of course you think BAR (staffed by people who run moral and intellectual circles around you - Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon, and Margaret Kimberly) is "pathetic," Carl people in its comments section openly mocked your Obamalust.
I quoted Michael Hureaux (a black writer and activist from Seattle) on Obama being "JFK in sepia." This was Hureaux's clever way of saying that Obama is a black-American imperialist, which you know him to be. You find it culturally offensive for a Caucasian to repeat it . I don't and in fact consider your criticism another way of you guys playing the race card (For what it's worth I find Wise's "y'all"s a little offensive and juvenile).
Have fun with your preferred "faction of imperialism" (and faction of corporate rule).
You have rolled out your David Duke slander again. You couldn't get the response the first time so no point repeating. This is a line you find too useful drop so like a good
"But your writings probably encouraged 10 more to do nothing." I never told anyone to support McCain or even not to vote for Obama. The fact some people might read me telling the truth about your hero (and the corporate-imperial political culture more broadly) and take that to mean they should do nothing on the election does not outweigh the moral responsibility of intellectuals (those "spectator sports"men/women) to tell the truth about things that matter.
My broader critique is of
Yes.. by all means, let's turn a blind eye to the machinations of power and cease to pay serious attention to the corporate-imperialist cabinet picks and policy actions of the Obama regime. "Little people: focus on your small sphere of influence at the local level and let the big fancy Harvard-certified experts handle the big policy subjects and appointments without critical scrutiny from their unqulalified inferiors. The rabble must stay out of the Masters' hair and stay fired up in its remote provinces."
Sorry, I'm stil going to monitor and critique the new regime and not stick my head iin the sand because Obama got in, Power elite research might strike you as a spectator sport but (a) that sounds a little too anti-intellectual to me and (b) in my experience the best activists need and appreciate folks who keep a good critical and detailed focus on power and exactly what it's doing at home and abroad.
Re: Uncle Tom slander...
By Davidson, Carl
No, you called him 'JFK in Sepia' and 'Worse than David Duke' as a holocaust denier re Iraq. Next to the latter, 'Uncle Tom' is rather mild.
Re: Geez, Carl
By Davidson, Carl
Paul, 'Black Agenda Report' is pathetic. It's latest is getting on Obama's case because he's not dark enough and doesn't have a slave in his family tree, only his wife's. I wouldn't brag about having anything printed there. It's support in the Black community is in the single digits on this issue, and even that is not among the best elements.
Good for you that you personally did the right thing in getting out the vote. But your writings probably encouraged 10 more to do nothing. So don't expect much praise from me.
I've pointed out from day one that Obama's team at the top is a faction of imperialism, and it still is. But it's not a matter of being a 'Left Opposition.' Here's what I posted elsewhere, replying to Danny Schecter, on our tasks:
"Exactly right Danny, organize and push from below, but focused: Green Jobs and Schools, Not War Jobs and Prisons, Healthcare for All, Not Warfare, Bailout our Infrastructure, no Golden Parachutes, and so on. Here's a note I just wrote to an old Trotskyist friend in Madison, WI:
"If America doesn't turn left, DW, it's not Obama's fault. Look in the mirror. There you see the real problem. The ball's now in our court. It's not a spectator sport, sitting back like a sportscaster or a fan or even a cheerleader.
You don't win at the top what you haven't organized and won at the base, not just in opinion polls, but in actual independent mass organizations and coalitions that know how to work and win local elections as well as put people in the streets. There we need both local and national deep structural reform platforms and organizers. Obama has fired up 3-to-6 million of them, now returning to their schools and workplaces.
My trend is well-positioned and charging full-speed ahead organizing them and doing just this. See http://beavercountyblue.org for examples. Obama's opened the door for participatory democracy and 'change from below. He's even invited us to lend a hand. Naturally, he's surrounded by ruling class elements, most of whom would rather not see this, and will work against it, but so what?
Our job is to organize and build the strengthen of the left pole, and its own platform, in the newly emerging counter-hegemonic historic bloc against neoliberalism, still the most dangerous and along with the corporate liberals, pulling Obama in the opposite direction. Shame on us if we're not imaginative enough to seize the time and move forward.
Don't worry so much about what Obama's is doing or who his staff picks are, what are YOU doing and WHO are YOUR local partners? That is question of the day that decides whether we turn left, and how much. So get on the stick."
Finally, I'll make you a deal. I'll read and review your book if you do the same with mine, 'CyberRadicalism: A New Left for A Global Age' available at http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker or via Amazon, but I'd also love to see a review by Tim Wise of your effort.
Uncle Tom slander...
By Street, Paul
And the other thing, Carl, is that I have never called Obama an "Uncle Tom." I have pointed out on different occasions that Obama (in accord with broader trends in the political culture) deeply downplays the depth and degree of racial inequality and institutional racism in American life. The (vast) evidence that he does this is presented in detail in the third chapter of my book (the chapter is titled "How 'Black' Is Obama? Color, Class, Generation, and the Perverse Racial Politics of the Post-Civil Rights Era"). See also the briliant writings of Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon and numerous other black left commentators at Black Agenda Report.
But I never call him an "Uncle Tom." Nor am I one who has questioned his level of "blackness," which is why "black" is in quote marks in my chapter title. After years working at an Urban League affillate, I know very well that the black community is fully capable of producing its own conservative and bourgeois, empire-friendly leaders (Obama is one of many), believe me.
The "worse" to which you refer? It is that I once described Obama as a "Holocaust denier" in specific relation to Iraq because of his statement to Janesville WI auto workers (before the Wisconsin primary) that "It's time to stop spending billions of dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together..."
That was a terrible (if all-too typical) thing for the CFR-vetted Obama to say on two levels: (1) it stated that we were "putting Iraq back together' when in fact we were imposing a Holocaust on Iraq (see Nir Rosen's article "The Death of Iraq" in the December 2007 issue of Current History) and were in fact taking it apart; (2) ,it denied our responsibilty to, well, spend billions of dollars a week "to put Iraq back together."
That description literally blew your mind as I recall. You fumed on ZNet for days. Sorry, I stick by it. Your hero opposed the Iraq invasion on pragmatic not principled grounds as a state senator and his rhetoric and behavior on Iraq since he entered the U.S ruling class has been shameful in numerous ways I (again) detail at length (oh those nasty and inconvenient facts of history, Carl) in my fourth chapter, titled "How 'Antiwar?' Obama, Iraq, and the Audacity of Empire."
I think you should suspend your comments about me until you drifve or walk to a Borders or a Barnes and Noble and buy my book and actually read it. Surely you've got some free time now. I also think you need to carefully read all of Obama's foreign policy speeches, chapters, and essays. Then look yourself in the mirror and see if you can reconcile your old antiwar self with your new Obamaist self...a person who has now so identified himself with an imperial office-holder that you call people who dare to make elementary left criticisms (that's a fairly big group by the way) of your fairly conservative politician part of an "anti-Obama ultra left.."
You left out a few names for us "ultra-radical" critics of U.S. imperialism: "anti-Bush,: "anti-Cheney," "anti-Gates" (he should stay on a year at least under your hero) anti-Clinton, anti-Albright, anti-Holbrooke, anti-Rice (both Condi and Susan)...and so on....fill in the names of the different memebers of the bipartisan U.S. foreign policy establishemt (a group that has congealed very nicely around Obama as you surely know)
"Anti-Obama" sounds a lot like "anti-American." Is your rightward trajectory going to turn you into some kind of neo-McCarthyite? i hope not. I don't want you to end up like that. Carl. .
Geez, Carl
By Street, Paul
Wow Carl - some gratitude. I make Wise's concluding argument ("back to work" in accord with Frederick Douglass's famous admonition about power never conceding without a fight) in more detail in my book and I brought in ballots (from rural whites in a contested state BTW, not on the already-won South Side for God's sake) for Obama. I spent many days talking small-town Caucasians (those a"bitter" folk Obama called them) off of McCain...And this is the thanks I get for helping out your candidate.
Geez, Carl. You just can't accept tactical assistance from someone who refused to join you in childish and/or cynical denial of your candiidate's deeply criminal and immoral foreign policy statements and commitments (like saying that the U.S. has done nothing it should apologize for under Bush, like calling for the escalation of the imperial assault on Afgahnistan, and like saying '"we've got to stop spending billions each week putting Iraq back together" ---- nice).
I figured your true colors would come out after Barack Council of Foreign Relations Obama won (something I've been assuming as next to inevitable since the fall of 2006, campaign rhetoric aside). Obviously you won't actually go into the progressive left opposition but instead will continue with more pathetic power worship and with your toxic bashing of what you call the "ultra-left" ---- meaning anyone who dares to observe that Barack is an imperialist..(.have you even read his foreign poilcy addresses...his Foreign Affairs essay...his truly terrible forreign polocy chapter in his 2006 book? You'll say you did but I seriously doubt it)
It's a damn shame you ended up like this, Carl. And while Tim is very smart and says some spot on things, no, he's often been fairly reckless and dysfunctional with the racism charge and he comes up very short when it comes to class and empire (the ruling -class and its role is far too invisible in his writings), and he has failed to show basic understanding (very advanced at Black Agenda Report) of the significant extent to which the Obama phenomeon is "Your Nation on White Privilege" (one of his clever essay titles) too. Instead ot reflexive defense how about suggesting a well-earned sabbatical to read some Chomsky, Pilger, C.Wright Mills, John Bellmay Foster, Sweezy, Domhoff, Milliband, Harvey, and dare I say Marx? We need Tim to move left and not end up in your space.
And how about actually reading my book on Obama? it's by far and away the best, most balanced and (yes) scholarly analysis of the Obama phenomeo