New Blog: The Woyingi Blog on Wordpress

Please visit my new blog on Wordpress, The Woyingi Blog

My Blackness-I got it from my papa!
The Woyingi blog is about being Black…but what do I mean by Black?

This takes some explanation as Black doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. In Britain and South Africa, for example, Black is a political term refering to pretty much everyone who isn’t purely European or “White” (Chinese South Africans recently won the right to be considered “Black” by the government). But in the U.S. Black usually refers to people who are descended from slaves brought from West and Central Africa during the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

In Canada, on our census, Black is considered a racial identity denoting descent from ethnicities indigeneous to Sub-Saharan Africa. This has led to problems because as the many so-called Blacks in Canada are from Black majority countries their identity as Black-skinned peoples is something they only figure out when they come here. Before, they were either Nigerian or Somali from a particular ethnic group or clan. As Black Nova Scotian writer George Elliot Clarke writes in his 1997 article The Complex Face of Black Canada when discussing Blacks of Caribbean descent:

As Quebec writer Dany Laferrière’s 1985 satire, Comment faire l’amour avec un Nègre sans se fatiguer (How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired), takes uproarious pains to point out, it is only on the North American mainland that a Haitian becomes “black,” or is expected to subscribe, instantly, to the white-black angst that plagues the white (and white supremacist) majority in the U.S. and Canada. In black-majority countries, social divisions occur around class and less so around race (though “colourism,” that is, discrimination by light-skinned blacks against darker-skinned blacks, is a problem). In 1973, the Barbados-born African-Canadian writer Austin Clarke described the “West Indian writer” as “a man from a society os-tensibly free of the worst pathologies of racialism, a man from a society into which black nationalism had to be imported from American Blacks.” Clarke’s comment underlines the weirdness of white-vs.-black constructs for many Caribbean emigrés.

In this blog, I will explore my experiences as a Black Woman of mixed French-Canadian, German, English, Ijaw, Yoruba descent who grew up not knowing her Nigerian father and so had to figure out what being Black meant all by herself.

I don’t have the answers but by exploring my own life and the lives of other Blacks I hope to provide some directions as to what it all could mean.

I am committed to trying to never say what it should mean to be Black because I think people have been telling Black folks what we should be for far too long that we don’t need to be playing the same game with each other.

I am committed to inclusivity in exploring issues facing Black communities around the world. I’m not going to discount a Black person’s Black authenticity because of their sexual orientation, religion, politics, etc. If you have a problem with that this is not the blog for you.

I want to explore the history and achievements of the peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa. So little is known about Sub-Saharan Africa. If I walk into a Chapters, I will be lucky if I can find any fiction written by Africans other than Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and the lastest by Adichie. If I look at the history section I might find a shelf devoted to Sub-Saharan African Affairs full of books written by White journalists…not even academics. AFRICA will be referred to as if it were a country, instead of a continent. And the titles of the books will usually include works like starve, famine, war, genocide, conflict, poverty, dark, etc. I want to help expose more people to writers, academics, and intellectuals from Sub Saharan Africa. (See: African Literature)

I also want to explore the diversity in Sub Saharan African diasporas. From Harlem to Kingston, to Rio de Janeiro to Lahore. Sub Saharan African communities have been scattered like seeds around the world, mostly through the horrors of slavery. But we’ve survived. What can we learn from each other? (See: Black African Diasporas)

This blog will remain up indefinitely

I was originally planning to delete this blog in February but it seems people are still commenting on these posts and as I haven't had much time to work on my new blog, The Woyingi Blogger, it isn't really ready to launch yet. So you might as well keep enjoying this one.

In order to distinguish my new blog from this one I have returned to the original title of this blog, Confessions of a Funky Ghetto Hijabi.

Thanks for reading,

Formerly The Funky Ghetto Hijabi

AQSA Zine Deadline Extended to Dec. 6th 2008

Attention Muslim Young Women & Trans People!!

Call for Submissions for AQSA Zine Issue #1

This Issue's Theme: Resistance and Self-Defense:

Because you spend your life fighting back with a smile or fist

Deadline: December 6, 2008

About Us: AQSA Zine is a grassroots print zine, as well as an on-line community(aqsazine.blogspot.com) that is open to all women and trans people who self-identify as Muslim (13 to 35 years old). It is a creative avenue for us to express ourselves, share our own experiences, and connect with others.

In Arabic, “aqsa” implies the furthermost, as in reaching out to the furtherist possible. Aqsa zine aims to inspire struggling to the utmost that we can. “Aqsa” is also the first name of the 16-year-old Muslimwoman, Aqsa Parvez, who was murdered by her family members on December 16, 2007. We recognize her murder as physical form of patriarchal violence, and the response to her murder from public institutions as Islamophobic,racist, and patriarchal. This zine is also inspired by Muslim young women and transpeople who experience and resist violence.

We work within an anti-racist,anti-Islamophobic, anti-imperialist, pro-choice, queer and trans positive framework. Our aim is to organize and document grassroots movements of Muslim young womenand trans people working to end violence in all its forms.

Why Submit: Because you’re tired of feeling fragmented and you know your body shouldn’t be anyone’s battleground. Because you don’t like being told who is Muslim and who isn’t. Because you know you aren’t anybody’s erotic exotic. Because you’re frustrated with people speaking slowly to you just because you are wearing a hijab. Because you're sick of people asking “why don't you wear hijab?” OR telling you you're not Muslim enough because you don't wear hijab. Because you’re bored by the question “you’re gay and Muslim?” Because you don’t want to see anymore of your family members profiled and harassed by the police. Because you hate being part of the “random” check at airports. Because you spend your life fighting back with a smile or fist.

AQSA Zine is a safe space to tell our stories, and to share and learn our herstories. Because WE SPEAK FOR OURSELVES.

Types of Submissions: Anything goes! Send us your stories (fiction or non-fiction),poetry,artwork, photography, comics, graphic designs, recipes, open letters toyour past or futureself or anyone else, ideas, opinions, rants, book/music/art/TV or movie reviews, essays, articles, and/or profiles of or interviews with Muslim women and trans people.

We want to learn about your dreams, hopes, fears,strategies for self-care, forms of resistance, and the grassroots movements againstviolence that occurs within and against our communities. Confidentiality: Submissions are confidential, and will not be reprinted without the author’s permission. Send us a note along with your submission letting us know whether you would like to be identified on your piece. You can use your first and/or last name,a pen name, or even remain completely anonymous. We want you to feel safe in making a contribution. You may also include a short (1-5 sentences) bio with your submission if you wish.

Deadline for Submissions has been extended to December 6, 2008. All submitters will be notified that their piece has been received. Submissions not published in the print zine will be featured on the on-line blog with the author’s permission.

Please note: we reserve the right to edit submissions after consultation with the author and submissions are not guaranteed publication in print or on-line.

Launch Parties: We are planning to hold zine launch parties on December 16--the anniversary of Aqsa Parvez’s death. Let us know if you want to hold a launch party in your area. We can help you organize and connect with other young Muslim women near you.

Contact Information: Send us your submissions, ask us questions, request moreinformation or get involved with this project and our work, by contacting us at:Email: aqsazine@gmail.com • Blog: aqsazine.blogspot.com

Muslim Moments: Twilight Arabian Style

Twilight: The Movie has finally arrived.

I am so annoyed.

What is with Muslim women and Twilight? Why are they so obsessed with the lovers Bella Swan (human) and Edward Cullen (vampire)? Are that few Muslim women having healthy happy human sex that they need to read about vampire sex? Are we so sexually repressed that our only outlets are stories about teenage vampire love? Are we really that Victorian?


Poster for Twilight. Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. True Love Waits Forever!

It was the Victorians, sexually repressed people who they were, who made vampires sexy. Vampires were gross and putrid before the Victorians got their hands on them and made them sexy and seductive.(Note on the Sexual Repression of Victorians: Queen Victoria wasn't sexually repressed at all, ironically. She wrote a lot about how much she enjoyed sex in her private diaries...which are now of course public because nothing is private after you die. She loved sex with her Prince Albert, she just didn't like getting pregnant.)

Now, Stephanie Meyer being into sexy vampires I get. She's a Mormon and those Mormons are pretty Victorian. She even graduated from Brigham Young University in Utah...can't get more Mormon than that. Hmm...what do the Mormons think about human-vampire marriages? I know they ain't fans of same-sex marriages.

I thought Islam was the least sexually repressed religion there was? It's a sorry day for the Ummah if our women would rather read about a love affair between a living dead boy and his equally pale and pasty-face mortal girlfriend. Vampires are COLD. They are COLD. And they are pale! Has the Muslim community's obsession with skin-lightening taken us this far?

When the final book of Twilight, Breaking Dawn, came out there was a Midnight Masquerade organized by the local Chapters. The place was swarming with girls, some as young as 8, a bunch of hijabis and their moms. So do these moms have no idea what their daughters are reading? Or have they been duped, like so many other Muslim mothers I know, into thinking that the Twilight Series is "just like Harry Potter".

Excuse me? This isn't the next Harry Potter, this is Anne Rice 's The Vampire Chronicles for Kids! But there shouldn't be Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles for Kids! (But the film "Interview with a Vampire", based on the first Vampire Chronicles novel by Anne Rice, and staring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and a young Kirsten Dunst as a child vampire is still one of my favorite films and I was probably way too young to watch it when I did.) Now that Anne Rice has been born again as a devout Catholic she won't be writing any sexy homoerotic Vampire Chronicles novels any more (as she wrote on Amazon.com "And yes, the Chronicles are no more! Thank God!")..unless it's about the Vampire Lestat accepting Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. I am sure that Vampire Chronicles fans will love that. Rice writes in her autobiography "Called Out of Darkness": "To be able to take the tools, the apprenticeship, whatever I learned from being a vampire writer, or whatever I was — to be able to take those tools now and put them in the service of God is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity. And I hope I can redeem myself in that way. I hope that the Lord will accept the books I am writing now."

Breaking Dawn has SEX in it. Not innocent Harry Potter snogging I mean full on SEX. It's not even human sex. It's passionate, physically injurious vampire sex. Kinky. Bella and Edward have sex on their wedding night. Remember this is written by a Mormon so sex between Bella and Edward only happens after they are married. (Muslim moms reading this sigh with relief) Before that there is just a lot of snogging and descriptions of Edward's "washboard stomach". But the morning after Bella is all bruised up because, you know, vampires are strong. Edward feels bad and refuses to have sex with her again but Bella is persistent and like true Victorians the young lovers don't know how to use protection properly and Bella gets knocked up with a half-human, half-vampire child. This is why kids need more safe sex education in schools!

Okay, so what really bugs me about Twilight? Is it the sex? YES, and no it's not because I'm such a pious Muslim or because I'm single and frustrated and just wish I could have some hot passionate married vampire sex of my own. No. Maybe I am becoming a prude in my old age but I don't think 8 year olds or even 12 year olds should be reading about sex, particularly not about sex with vampires that results in physical injuries for humans. Call me old-fashioned.

But that's not my only issue with Twilight. My problem is that a human girl wants to become a vampire so that she can live forever with her vampire lover and have less painful sex with him. Don't girls have anything better to do? Don't they have their own lives? Do we really have to sacrifice our mortality for a man? Please.

I guess I just worry about what message this is sending to young girls. It is giving them unrealistic expectations about romantic love for one thing (And you thought Bollywood was bad). Also, it's saying give up everything to be with your man! (Although Edward does want Bella to finish high school and go to college and Bella also kind of loves Jacob the Werewolf and Edward doesn't get jealous because he's immortal like that...but I digress). I already heard a fight between a girl and her boyfriend because her boyfriend wouldn't buy her a new car. "Edward bought Bella a Mercedes because he feared for her safety. You don't really love me!"

But I guess I should be happy that kids and teenagers are reading at all.

Not all Muslim girls are into Twilight. Why? No, not for religious reasons, they just think that pale vampires are gross. So do I!

While I was speaking to a bunch of teenage hijabi Muslim girls on the Thursday before Twilight opened, the following discussion took place.

The Funky Ghetto Hijabi: So, who's going to see Twilight tomorrow?

Gaggle of Muslim Girls: ME, ME! I am! I am!

But one hijabi, who is usually quite excitable, was groaning and rolling her eyes.

The Funky Ghetto Hijabi: So, I take it you will not be seeing Twilight.

Excitable Hijabi: No, it's gross. That Edward guy is so ugly. He's so White. He needs a tan. I don't care if he's a vampire. He can wear fake tan. Why couldn't they cast some hot Arab guy as the vampire? It's racism.

The Funky Ghetto Hijabi: I don't think the character of Edward Cullen is Arab.

Excitable Hijabi: So! It's racism. Arab guys are so much hotter.

The Funky Ghetto Hijabi: So, you would want to see Twilight set in Lebanon with some hot Arab vampires and Edward Cullen would be all tanned and have a little beard action going on?

Excitable Hijabi (excited again): Yes, Yes! I want a hot Lebanese vampire!

If I were to do a Muslim Treatment of Twilight I think I would scrap the whole "vampire" stuff. It's so Western European and Victorian. Vampires aren't hot. Vampires are cold. No, if I wanted to write a love story between a human girl and an immortal boy the immortal boy wouldn't be a vampire, he'd be a djinn.

What's a djinn, you ask? Well, they are discussed in the Qu'ran in Surat Al-Jinn but you might be more familiar with the idea of a "genie", like Robin Williams in Aladdin or "I Dream of Jeannie" or Christina Aguilera's hit "Genie in a Bottle" (Chorus: "I'm a genie in a bottle, You gotta rub me the right way."...Hmm, if that isn't sexual innuendo I don't know what is.)

The word "djinn" is developed from the Arabic root word meaning “hidden from sight”. Djinn have free will and so can choose to be good or to be evil. They can even convert to Islam. Djinn are warm, some say even fiery because they are made from "smokeless fire". I definitely prefer that to cold and pasty. They are much stronger physically than humans. They can move and travel quickly. There are good Djinn and bad Djinn, so the boy would be a good Djinn who wants to protect humans and be a good Muslim but must battle the bad Djinn, like the qareen and the Djinn who possess people and the evil "ghul" who are shape-shifters and eat human beings. The English word "ghoul" comes from the Arabic word for "ghul".

Hmm...the more I think about this idea the more I think I just might write up a Muslim Treatment of Twilight...but that would mean having to watch the film. NO!

OBAMA-RAMA: Barack the Magnificent by Mighty Sparrow

OBAMA-RAMA: Because something changed on Nov 4th...but I'm not sure what.

The following are the lyrics to the song "Barack The Magnificent" by legendary singer and self-proclaimed King of the Calypso World, Mighty Sparrow. Originally from Trinidad (born in Grenada), Mighty Sparrow's career in Calypso spans over 40 years.

He is a naturalized US Citizen who lives in New York. Sparrow endorsed Obama back in 2007 during an exclusive meeting at the Marriott Hotel in Brooklyn.


MIGHTY SPARROW AND BARACK OBAMA

Sparrow's music has always been socially conscious and political. He was a supporter of Eric Williams, who he referred to as "The Doctor" and his People's National Movement (PNM) which formed in 1955 and led Trinidad and Tobago to independence in 1962.

My favourite Sparrow song is about the Crown Heights Riots between Blacks and Jews back in 1991.

Obama has promoted himself as a champion of Arts and Culture in America.

According to his campaign site Obama believes that "The arts embody the American spirit of self-definition."

He has several proposals for supporting artists, one of which I found quite interesting:

Promote Cultural Diplomacy: American artists, performers and thinkers – representing our values and ideals– can inspire people both at home and all over the world. Through efforts like that of the United States Information Agency, America’s cultural leaders were deployed around the world during the Cold War as artistic ambassadors and helped win the war of ideas by demonstrating to the world the promise of America. Artists can be utilized again to help us win the war of ideas against Islamic extremism.

Yay! American artists will be used to fight the war against Islamic Extremism!

Why do I feel sick?

Why don't the Americans help promote the work of Muslim artists in these countries instead of importing American artists?...Oh Wait a minute because then it would be about promoting the Arts and not just American propaganda posing as Art.

Here's the link to Mighty Sparrow's song on Youtube. Sparrow pretty much outlines Obama's entire election platform in this song. This is why Barack Obama won the election. Sparrow is supposedly working on a whole album dedicated to Obama.


HE'S COME TO SAVE THE WORLD!

Lyrics: Barack The Magnificent by Mighty Sparrow

The respect of the world that we now lack,
If you want it back, then vote Barack!
Because this time we come out to vote!

Stop the war!
Stop genocide in Darfur!
No matter what,
Get health care for who have not!
The Foreign Relations Committee,
Can attest to his tenacity,
For homeland and job security.

He stood his ground
When the war was a conception,
Said it was wrong,
So he didn’t go along,
Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton
They said of Barack’s opinion,
“He’s a man of resplendent vision!”

I know the warmongers are anxious, ready and set,
Saddam is who posing to us our really main threat,
They magnified Saddam’s offences,
Now we’re paying the consequences,
Everyday our soldiers joining the trenches!

Barack! Barack!
He’s fighting for openness and honest government!
Barack!
He’s doggedly defiant,
Phenomenal strength and wisdom beyond comment!

After you put we in a quagmire!
Not this time!
We come out to vote!

What’s at stake?
Clean up Washington overall!
In the wake
Of the Jack Abramoff scandal.
The middle class done elect a man,
It’s without representation,
This régime has too much corruption!
He wants to see,
A whole energy policy,
Inclusively,
Extent? Comprehensively:
Renewable fuels to clean coal,
There’ll be no price gouging at all,
These things are Barack Obama’s goal.

Entrenched in the crooked régime, we must all, take note,
They’ll be kicking and screaming at me, so we all must vote!
By not exercising these rights,
It’s refusing to see the light,
Democrats! Rise up! Stand up and fight!

Barack! Barack!
On the Senate Affair Committee he’s a giant!
Barack!
Dignifiedly resilient,
And with rock star status he’s Barack The Magnificent!

You talk about how you won’t cut and run,
Rumsfeld and Rove, that’s what they done!
But not this time!
We come out to vote!
Not so government work!

As a grad,
From both Columbia and Harvard,
This GI lad,
Want all others to study hard,
We’re the wealthiest in less respects,
Without proper health insurance,
Walter Reed Hospital, for instance.
Quality check!
Every wounded soldier should get,
Not abject neglect,
All providers must give a heck!
Health care must be affordable
And easily accessible,
Make existentialism enjoyable!
Without that we could be living in pure misery,
Psychological, mental, even insanity.
Loving husband, father of two,
That is Obama’s point of view,
Religiously-urged family value.


Barack! Barack!
Civil rights lawyer who taught constitutional law.
Barack!
Super terrific, I quote,
“Candidate of note!”
So, make sure he gets your vote!

Subpoenaing them gets you no answer!
The Attorney-General can’t remember!
Not this time!
We come out to vote!

We know he’s young,
But, with the Wisdom of Solomon,
Not like that one!
He has experience, look what he’s done!
Insurgents have just one focus:
That’s to put a hurting on us.
Worldwide security must be enforced!

Immigration
Could even get further outta hand,
The border plan,
He’ll protect in legal fashion
Undocumenteds would get time,
They’ll have to atone for their crime,
Criminals would be kicked out, behind!
Employers who hire illegals and who outsource,
Know it’s unconstitutional and time to change course,
Special interests ain’t facing facts,
Illiteracy and slavery could last,
Disenfranchisement gone, the time has passed!

Barack! Barack!
The first black President to lead this mighty nation!
Barack!
We’ll regain worldwide respect
with Obama’s vision and excellent comprehension!

The respect of the world we now lack,
If you want it back, then vote Barack!
Not this time!
We come out to vote!

Read the article Singing Obama's Praises about all the reggae and calypso songs written about Obama and presented at this year's Canadian Calypso Monarch Finals.

OBAMA-RAMA: Barack Obama is NOT a House Negro

OBAMA-RAMA: Because something changed on Nov 4th...but I'm not sure what.

"Back during slavery, when Black people like me talked to the slaves, they didn't kill 'em, they sent some old house Negro along behind him to undo what he said. You have to read the history of slavery to understand this.

There were two kinds of Negroes. There was that old house Negro and the field Negro. And the house Negro always looked out for the master. When the field Negro got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put 'em back on the plantation.

The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and lived in a better house. He lived right next to his master-in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food as the master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like the master-good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That's why he didn't want his master hurt." (From the speech "The house negro and the field negro" by Malcolm X)



MALCOLM X


I knew this was going to happen.

I knew that sooner or later some fool, most likely an Arab Muslim fool would call Barack Obama a slave.

It was only a matter of time.

Recently in a video message to Barack Obama, Al Zawahiri allegedly called Obama an "abeed al-beit" (slave of the house). He also called him a "house negro".

Thanks Al Zawahiri for further worsening African Americans' perceptions of Arab Muslims...as if Darfur wasn't enough.

And of course now I, a Black Muslim woman, am going to have to explain to all my non-Muslim Black friends just what the hell he is on about.

Al Zawahiri is a big fan of Malcolm X. Malcolm X's picture is supposedly hanging in the backdrop of this video along with a picture of Barack Obama praying at the Wailing Wall sporting a yarmulke. And we all know that Malcolm X liked to call Black people who he felt got along too well with white folks "house negroes". So now, Al Zawahiri has been quoted as saying in reference to Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell: "It is true about you and people like you ... what Malcolm X said about the house Negroes." The tape also allegedly includes a recording of Malcolm X's speech "The house negro and the field negro" delivered in Selma, Alabama in February 1965." where he discusses his contempt for the "house negro."

I first became concerned about the popularity among Muslims, particularly Muslims who aren't of African descent, of the word "house negro" to refer to Muslims whose views of Islam they didn't agree with.

I remember reading an article by British Muslim journalist and editor of Q-News Fareena Alam "A humane Muslim future" published online in opendemocracy in which she wrote: "Terrorism must be beaten, but it cannot be defeated with its own weapons – bombs, bullets, and the denial of human rights. We must not be afraid to follow the middle way, away from the extremes of literalism and, as Malcolm X would say, “house negroism”. Muslims, and all the world’s people, deserve better."

In this article she is referring to Muslims who are political allies of the Imperialist West as products of "house negroism". Fareena Alam is not an African American; I think she's British Bangladeshi. I know what she was trying to say but how she said it blighted an otherwise worthy article.

There are just certain terms you should not appropriate. "House Negro" is one of them.

Why? Well, because to understand why Malcolm X had so much contempt for house Negroes you have to understand fully just what a house negro was in the context of American Southern Plantation society: a product of the rape of a Black female slave by a White slave owner. The house negro's identity cannot and should not be compared to other people "selling out" their communities. To do so, is to totally show contempt for and ignorance of the traumatic legacy of slavery in the American South and the West Indies.

From The Autobiography of Malcolm X:

"Louise Little, my mother, who was born in Grenada, in the British West Indies, looked like a white woman. Her father was white. She had straight black hair, and her accent did not sound like a Negro's. Of this white father of hers, I know nothing except her shame about it. I remember hearing her say she was glad that she had never seen him. It was, of course, because of him that I got my reddish-brown "mariny" color of skin, and my hair of the same color. I was the lightest child in our family. (Out in the world later on, in Boston and New York, I was among the millions of Negroes who were insane enough to feel that it was some kind of status symbol to be light-complexioned-that one was actually fortunate to be born thus. But, still later. I learned to hate every drop of that white rapist's blood that is in me.)"

"House Negroes" were light-skinned and were given less physically straining labour than the "field negroes" who were often more recent imports from Africa, and who were forced to do hard labour and were more likely to receive brutal physical punishment.

In his speech "The house negro and the field negro" Malcolm asserts that he's a "field negro". But the truth is Brother looks a lot like a house negro. Malcolm X hated his light complexion. The house negro had a light complexion that was a direct result of his or her mixed race identity. The house negro is torn between two worlds; his or her loyalty to his or her master could very well be because they are blood relations. Malcolm X doesn't say this but it's understood..."You have to read the history of slavery to understand this."

Although it is wrong to deliberately "sell out" our communities, the reality is we as Black people have the right to be individuals. We have the right to vote for who we want or pursue whatever political ideology we want and not be accused of being traitors to our race. When a Black person isn't "left-wing" or "liberal" they are considered traitors to their race but if a White person is right-wing they are just considered a knob. Why should Black people continually be denied freedom of thought and action?

Barack Obama, as well as myself, are mixed race. We have White mothers. We are not the products of rape but of love...or at least lust. We were claimed as our mothers' children. We were not denied. Our loyalties need not be divided unless Blacks deny us our individualities, our unique voices, the truth of our experience...and this they often do.

The truth is I have never really much admired Malcolm X. I still find him fascinating to read as a study of a conflicted mixed race man. In that way, his work has been invaluable to me. But he's not someone I can say I look up to. He was searching, as so many of us are searching, for a place to belong, for acceptance, to come out of the fields and into the house.

Good Black Man, Bad Black Man

When Malcolm X visited Mecca he was made a guest of the state by Prince Faysal "the absolute ruler of Arabia" as Malcolm X called him. Prince Faysal was eager for Malcolm X to learn the "true Islam", not that of the Nation of Islam, and for him to spread this "true Islam" to his fellow Black Muslims, and hopefully, the entire United States of America. As Malcolm X said:

"America needs to understand Islam, because this was the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white'-but the 'white' attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color."

Unfortunately, that isn't the experience of many Blacks within Muslim communities, particularly in North America. Even outside of the Muslim community, Blacks are experiencing racism from Arabs and other Muslims.

Quite frankly, given the extent of ethnic conflict that exists in the Muslim World between Muslims I don't know how anyone could presume that Islam can solve the racial problems of the US if it can't even solve the ethnic problems of the Muslim world. People living in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones.

But Malcolm X didn't know much about the history of either Africa or the Middle East. He might have heard very different stories if he had spoken with the Nuba of Sudan or the Afro-Shirazi of Zanzibar...but he didn't. And let's face it...Brother looked like an Arab (so does Barack Obama when you come to think about it).

Al Zawahiri considers Malcolm X an "honourable" Black Man because he believes that Malcolm X's thought and actions were in line with this own. Spreading Islam across America now that is definitely Al Zawahiri's cup of tea.


BARACK OBAMA

Al Zawahiri has contempt for Obama, Rice and Powell partly because they are agents of American Imperialist Foreign Policy in the Muslim World. Fair enough. But what I can't take is that he also seems to have contempt for them because they are "uppity negroes". If you have a problem with their politics that's one thing but if you decide to attack them using racial slurs because you don't like their politics it's because you are a racist not because you are resisting American Imperialism. What Al Zawahiri is really saying is: "How Dare Black People Threaten the Muslim World...don't they know they used to be our slaves?"

There are Arab and Muslim activists out there who are trying to resist American Imperialism and not being total racist jerks while doing it. They are also trying to fight the racism and the legacy of slavery within their communities. Al Zawahiri's alleged statements have just made their job that much harder.

Yes I am Muslim but I am also African and I refuse to be any one's "house negro". Not the White Man's or the Arab Man's. Not the Christian's or the Muslim's. The continent of Africa has been devastated time and again by the hegemonic machinations of both these communities. I could just as easily make a case for reparations for slavery against Egypt, Morocco, Oman, Iraq, Saudi Arabia (remember Mecca was a major slave market), and Turkey as I could make against the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Spain, and Holland. So neither community should ever dare to demand my loyalty.

OBAMA-RAMA: Open Letter From Leonard Peltier to Barack Obama

OBAMA-RAMA: Because something changed on Nov 4th...but I'm not sure what.



Leonard Peltier is a Sioux political prisoner and member of the American Indian Movement. In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murder of two FBI Agents who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In 1999, Amnesty International has called for his release from Prison.

Open Letter From Leonard Peltier to Barack Obama

September 15, 2008

I have watched with keen interest and renewed hope as your campaign has mobilized millions of Americans behind your message of changing a political system that serves a small economic elite at the expense of the peoples of the United States and the world. Your election as president of the United States, where slaves and Indians were long considered less than human under the law, will undoubtedly constitute a historic moment in race relations in the United States.

Yet symbolism alone will not bring about change. Our young people, black and Native alike, suffer from police brutality and racial profiling, underfunded schools, and discrimination in employment and housing. I sincerely hope your campaign will inspire some hope among our youth to struggle for a better future. I am, however, concerned that your recent statement on the Sean Bell verdict, in which the New York police officers who fired 50 shots at a young man on the eve of his wedding were acquitted of criminal charges, displays a rather myopic view of the law. Until the law is harnessed to protect the victims of state violence and racism, it will serve as an instrument of repression, just as the slave codes functioned to sustain and legitimize an inhuman institution.

As I can testify from experience, the legal institutions of this nation are far from racial and political neutrality. When judges align with the repressive actions and policies of the executive branch, injustice is rationalized and cloaked in judicial platitudes. As you may know, I have now served more than three decades of my life as a political prisoner of the federal government for a crime I did not commit. I have served more time than the maximum sentence under the guidelines under which I was sentenced, yet my parole is continually denied (on the rare occasions when I am afforded a hearing) because I refuse to falsely confess. Amnesty International, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, my Guatemalan sister Rigoberta Menchu, and many of your friends and supporters have recognized me as a political prisoner and called for my immediate release. Millions of people around the world view me as a symbol of injustice against the indigenous peoples of this land, and I have no doubt that I will go down in history as one of a long line of victims of U.S. government repression, along with Sacco and Vanzetti, the Haymarket Square martyrs, Eugene Debs, Bill Haywood, and others targeted by for their political beliefs. But neither I nor my people can afford to wait for history to rectify the crimes of the past.

As a member of the American Indian Movement, I came to the Pine Ridge Oglala reservation to defend the traditional people there from human rights violations carried out by tribal police and goon squads backed by the FBI and the highest offices of the federal government. Our symbolic occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 inspired Indians across the Americas to struggle for their freedom and treaty rights, but it was also met by a fierce federal siege and a wave of violent repression on Pine Ridge. In 1974, AIM leader Russell Means campaigned for tribal chairman while being tried by the federal government for his role at Wounded Knee. Although Means was barred from the reservation by decree of the U.S.-client regime of Richard Wilson, he won the popular vote, only to be denied office by extensive vote fraud and control of the electoral mechanisms. Wilson's goons proceeded to shoot up pro-Means villages such as Wanblee and terrorize traditional supporters throughout the reservation, killing at least 60 people between 1973 and 1975.

It is long past time for a congressional investigation to examine the degree of federal complicity in the violent counterinsurgency that followed the occupation of Wounded Knee. The tragic shootout that led to the deaths of two FBI agents and one Native man also led not only to my false conviction, but also the termination of the Church Committee, which was investigating abuses by federal intelligence and law enforcement agents, before it could hold hearings on FBI infiltration of AIM. Despite decades of attempts by my attorneys to obtain government documents related to my case, the FBI continues to withhold thousands of documents that might tend to exonerate me or reveal compromising evidence of judicial collusion with the prosecution.

I truly believe the truth will set me free, but it will also signify a symbolic break from America's undeclared war on indigenous peoples. I hope and pray that you possess the courage and integrity to seek out the truth and the wisdom to recognize the inherent right of all peoples to self-determination, as acknowledged by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. While your statements on federal Indian policy sound promising, your vision of "one America" has an ominous ring for Native peoples struggling to define their own national visions. If freed from colonial constraints and external intervention, indigenous nations might well serve as functioning models of the freedom and democracy to which the United States aspires.

Yours in the struggle.

Until freedom is won,

Leonard Peltier
# 89637-132
U.S.P. Lewisburg,
P.O. Box 1000,
Lewisburg, PA USA 17837

Note from the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee:

Please Help Support the LPDOC for Leonard's Freedom

As Leonard Peltier marks his 64th birthday on Sept. 12, the LPDOC is redoubling its efforts to win his freedom. We are planning an ambitious organizing drive in our new Fargo office to persuade North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, to investigate the federal government's role in the violent counterinsurgency on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1973-1976, the FBI's withholding of thousands of pages of documents related to the AIM activist, and the unfair federal trial in Fargo which led to Leonard's conviction in 1977.

OBAMA-RAMA: Presidential candidate Ralph Nader's open letter to Barack Obama

OBAMA-RAMA: Because something changed on Nov 4th...but I'm not sure what.


Open letter to Senator Barack Obama
Dear Senator Obama:

In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity— not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas— the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League’s 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. …Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli’s use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli’s assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its ‘legitimate right to defend itself.’"

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government’s assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp… with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate— Uri Avnery— described Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future— if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama’s declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans— even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center’s post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.

Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics— opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)— and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.

Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

OBAMA-RAMA: What the global Left can learn from Obama's victory by Oloo Onyango

OBAMA-RAMA: Because something changed on Nov 4th...but I'm not sure what.

What the global Left can learn from Obama's victory by Onyango Oloo (2008-11-13)

* Onyango Oloo is a Kenyan political activist and former political prisoner and "dyed in the wool Marxist-Leninist". He is Luo, the same ethnic group as Barack Obama Senior, father of the President-Elect of the United States.


Through examining the broader context behind the recent US election, Onyango Oloo argues that Barack Obama’s emergence as an exceptional figure of leadership is to a great extent circumstantial. In his timeless historical appeal, the new president-elect merits comparison with Nelson Mandela and will likely be remembered favourably by posterity regardless of the potential ineffectiveness of his policy over the long-term. Situating Obama’s victory within a broader political move across the Americas towards left-wing governance – notably in Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia – Oloo contends that the real challenge for forces of the global Left will centre on building on and exploring the successes of a veritable popular movement for democratic reform. Pambazuka News: Weekly Forum for Social Justice in Africa


On the Friday after the historic Tuesday, Kenyans were still ululating and gyrating to the beat of the Obama presidential landslide. There was a public holiday decreed by our doddering head of state (forgetting for a moment that Kibaki himself stole an equally fiercely contested election just a few months ago), while a market-savvy brewer promoted one of its labels from senator to president (albeit in a limited edition). In the same spirit, a backstreet smarts guerrilla music producer unleashed a breaking news Benga-tinged praise song awash with brand new footage from the Grant Park site of the acceptance speech by Illinois's most famous politician, and in the classifieds at the very back of the daily newspapers, an innovative ‘Obama Sale’ to entice and pamper politically primed penny pinchers appeared, while in the maternity wards of Kenya we saw the appearance of instant Baracks and Barakas, including a fresh pair of fraternal Kisumu twins with the monikers Michelle and Barack. And on the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation's Kiswahili Service, an Obama campaign ditty by Trinidad's legendary calypso griot Mighty Sparrow continues the spirit of elation…

But in our excitement, some of us have propelled Obama to near messianic, almost mythical heights, even though the man himself (and his very down to earth spouse) frequently reminded his huge audiences that he is a very fallible human being with more than a couple of foibles just like the rest of us. In once in a life time global moments like this, we must pause and revisit the phenomenon of outstanding leaders and the historical circumstances which propel them to the national and world stages. It is my argument that if Barack Obama had never been born 47 years ago, history would still have invented him. Now, I know that I have just uttered what to some is a confusing and cryptic remark. What I am saying is that the concrete historical and material circumstances in the United States provided the fertiliser that allowed a neophyte first-time African-American senator like Barack Obama to knock on the doors of destiny in the early 21st century.

After eight years of the fascist, neoconservative and neoliberal Bush administration it was almost imperative that a leader would arise as an antidote to all those years of jingoistic and militaristic insanity, those delusions of prosperity spurred by oodles of snake oil from the crass neoliberal salesmen of global monopoly capitalism and the gross xenophobia of the bloodthirsty racists who denigrated Arabs and other people of colour using the canards of the Bush Doctrine. The specific set of socio-economic and political circumstances created the pre-conditions that allowed the talents, the vim, the fervour, the vigour, the inspiration, the charisma of a biracial Illinois constitutional professor turned senator to galvanise a grass roots movement and drive the pilots of the MV Project for a New American Century out of town and straight into the dustbins of political rejection. Remember, Obama has been living on this planet for almost half a century now. Eight years ago he failed miserably in his bid to be a member of the US Congress. Today he is on the brink of making history.

What is the difference? The time. Or rather the timing of his remarkable rise. It was important for Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and co. to rise to power to enable Obama to make history.

He is a leader who is needed in the United States at this time. In the future there will be other Obamas who may or may not even make it past their local counties and state legislatures. That is what I meant when I said a moment ago that if Obama had never been born, the disaster known as the Bush reign of terror would have created him anyway. Philosophically, I am very much influenced by Marxist thought and I agree wholeheartedly with the excerpt I have included at length below:

‘The role of great men [and women – Oloo] in history can be understood only by examining their activity in relation to the class struggle, to the activity of large social groups and to the struggle between these groups. Outstanding public men [and women - Oloo] are not the creators of events and movements but the leaders of the masses, of social classes. The support they receive from large social groups is, in fact, the source of their strength. No matter how gifted and intelligent these leaders may be in themselves, without such support they are powerless and incapable of exercising any significant influence on the course of events... Whether people with exceptional abilities come to the fore or not is inseparably connected with the operation of historical law.

‘There are always talented, gifted people in society. But only the appearance of a social need for people possessing certain capabilities, certain qualities of mind and character, can bring such people to the fore and create the necessary conditions for this. This is seen particularly strikingly in an epoch of revolutions, when hundreds of thousands of people come to direct public affairs, people who shortly before were quite unknown and who under the conditions of the old system could find no application of their talents and abilities. In exactly the same way the social demand in time of war creates conditions for the promotion of people possessing qualities of generalship. Who it is who comes to the fore under certain social conditions remains, of course, a matter of chance, the actual fact of the promotion of people whose qualities correspond to the needs of the age has the character of a natural law... Whether a particular outstanding public figure arises or not is a matter of chance, but this does not mean that anybody could occupy his (or her) place and carry out (their) historical mission. To perform that task appropriate qualities and abilities are needed. It is usually therefore people possessing such qualities to a greater or lesser degree who come to the fore as leaders...’(1)

In other words, what I am also saying is that students of Obama-mania must also examine the role that US progressive forces, particularly anti-war activists, radical democrats, anti-racists, feminists, LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bi-Sexual-Transsexual) foot soldiers, youth advocates, environmentalists and other militant groups have played in confronting the excesses of Bush and his big business supporters. We must factor in democratic and anti-imperialist forces around the world, from Latin America, to Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Caribbean, North America and Europe who have mobilised and organised against the neoliberal global agenda. It is not an accident that there were 200,000 people in Berlin to drink in Barack Obama's every word a few months ago. In today's globalised world, we are all Americans to the extent that US imperialist policies impact on every one of our countries and therefore we all had a life and death stake in helping decide whom the next occupant of the White House will be.

Lest we forget, Obama's triumph is not an isolated incident in the Americas. It follows the consolidation of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez, the success of the Movement Towards Socialism in Bolivia under Evo Morales – himself of indigenous stock, the ascendancy to the presidency in Paraguay of a left-wing outsider and pro-poor priest, a strike against the IMF and the World Bank in Ecuador and Argentina by progressive regimes, and the repeated success of Lula da Silva, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), and popular forces in Brazil (even with its centrist drift lately).

It is sweet but stale news by now that the world's candidate for the US presidency has prevailed, like Muhammad Ali in an unforgettable gruelling bout against a McCain-Sonny Liston from the yesteryears of the American political establishment.

Yes, let us savour that epic victory that is set to define an aspect of this epoch.
But will Obama deliver on all our dreams, aspirations and desires? Will he end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and stop the imperialist forays into Pakistan? Will he stop the meltdown of the global casino capitalist economy? Will he liberate Africa and the Third World from the peony, penury and pillory of the evil Bretton Woods twins? And end the Washington consensus against the Global South?

Will he restore the tens of thousands of foreclosed homes across the United States and guarantee full employment to his fellow Americans? Will he thwart the nuclear threat to human survival, sign the Kyoto Protocol, release Mumia Abu Jamal, Leonard Peltier and the Cuban Five? Will he shut down the Guantánamo Bay torture centre and take Bush and Rumsfeld to the International Criminal Court (ICC)?

This is where we all have to come crashing back to planet earth.

Yes, it is true that Obama has exceptional leadership qualities that allowed him to trounce the Clintons and all those Democratic Party big wigs in the race for his party's nomination. Yes, it is true that John McCain is running against eight years of failed Republican policies. Yes, it is true that progressive global humanity gave the much-needed impetus for Obama to rise to the top.

But, and this is an important caveat, Barack Obama would not have secured the Democratic ticket to run for president if the monopoly bourgeoisie in the United States felt that he posed a grave danger to their class interests in the United States and around the world. International finance capital vetted Obama and saw in him a pair of very steady hands at the helm of the US Empire.

I have not been surprised to see the evolution of Barack Obama Jr. from a left-of-centre progressive Democrat to a centre right mainstream politician who promises to bomb Pakistan, kill Osama bin Laden and support the apartheid regime in Israel to the hilt.

We are thus confronted with the surreal contradiction:

Obama, the antidote to Bush, has all but guaranteed that he will pursue policies that will 'stabilise' the rule of international finance capital. Is Obama therefore a political charlatan that we should guard against? Or did he move deliberately to the right in order not to antagonise the Zionist and big business lobbies who would have blocked his election as the 44th President of the United States?

Many leftwing voices, like the prominent American commentator James Petras, think that Barack Obama is no friend of anti-imperialist and radical forces around the world. In a recent piece, Petras gave 12 reasons why he was rejecting Obama and voting for either Cynthia McKinney (former US Congresswoman and now the flag bearer for the US Greens) or Ralph Nader, the perennial radical loser/spoiler. Ralph Nader himself unleashed an Open Letter to Obama on 3 November in which he had less than complimentary things to say to the new US president.

Given all this leftist disquiet around the world, why is Onyango Oloo, a dyed-in-the wool Kenyan Marxist-Leninist, rooting for Obama? Is it because he shares part of my Luo and Kenyan heritage?

Hardly.

I think it is because the Obama presidency represents a very significant democratic breakthrough in contemporary world politics. The symbolism of an African-American president goes beyond the shallowness of skin colour and the superficialities of ethnic identity or national origin. We have seen African-Americans at the citadels of US power before - Condoleeza Rice is arguably the most powerful woman in the world. But like her boss Bush, she is universally reviled, not withstanding the fact that she is African-American and a woman as well. And much as he later cut a suave, sober urbane figure, we could never forget the fact that General Colin Powell helped supervise the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.

Obama, on the other hand, is at the apex of a progressive national and international coalition against neoliberalism despite his overt ties to a section of the US big business interests. For me, I think the best analogy is to compare Obama to Mandela.

Now strictly speaking, Obama is not comparable to the great Nelson Mandela, the most widely respected world statesman still living. What I am referring to is the fact that Nelson Mandela towered above other global leaders despite the fact that strictly speaking his politics were really not that radical or revolutionary.

As a matter of historical record, Thabo Mbeki's discredited neoliberal policies known as Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) in South Africa were first initiated in 1996 when Nelson Mandela was still president. The South African Communist Party refers to these policies as the 1996 Class Project.

We still revere Mandela for pioneering the historic democratic breakthrough that triggered the collapse of the main pillars of the apartheid edifice in South Africa. Were we to examine his socio-economic policies under a harsh ideological lens, we would find that our beloved Madiba is completely culpable in the current spate of high unemployment, xenophobia and growing class contradictions gripping post-apartheid South Africa.

But we know that the Nelson Mandela that history will remember is not the co-architect of GEAR but rather the iconic ANC leader who endured 27 years in the dungeons and penitentiaries of the former apartheid state at the southern tip of our mother continent. Likewise, whatever else Barack Obama does with the 44th Presidency of the United States, posterity will remember the history he made on 4 November 2008.

Abraham Lincoln is credited with the legal emancipation of slaves in the United States. Who remembers his many, many significant flaws and drawbacks? Who remembers that George Washington was a slave owner?

Of course, Obama's complete legacy will not be determined nor can it be examined until after he leaves political office, whether it be after four years or two terms from now. Since that task is not only premature but impossible to carry out today, in early November, even before he has been sworn in, let us restrict ourselves to lifting our glasses in a toast to his famous victory for now at least.

But that is not all I have to say on the subject. For progressive, leftwing forces around the world I have the following observations to share:

As Vladimir Lenin and other Marxists said time and time again, the most direct path to socialism and revolution is through democracy. In other words, we must be swimming in the midst of the mass democratic tumult, participating in all the contemporary struggles in order not only to remain relevant, but keep the people vigilant about the long term tasks of progressive humanity. It is only by being part of these major struggles involving millions upon millions of fighting people that we can champion, in a credible way, our more radical and more sustainable agendas for social, economic, and political transformation.

If you were a German or a European in the 1930s and 1940s and did not take up against Hitler and Nazism, you forfeited any claims to be progressive. Likewise, you could not call yourself a 'revolutionary' in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s if you did not act in solidarity with South Africans in their struggle against apartheid or the Palestinians in their quest for national liberation. In the 2000s you were a bogus radical if you did not understand the importance of dislodging George Bush and his fascist Republican cabal from their perch and stranglehold of state power in the United States. To that extent supporting an Obama presidency was a democratic and even dare I say a revolutionary imperative for anyone - be they African, Asian, Caribbean, European, Latin or North American - who considered themselves even remotely 'leftist' (notwithstanding the ideological limitations of Barack Obama the individual). As he himself said, the election campaign was never really about him as a person, or even black people as a race.

The broad democratic movement in the United States which put together the grand coalition that voted out Bush's acolytes from office has important lessons to those of us in the Left who spend too much time navel-gazing and hair-splitting and far less time mobilising and organising ordinary people to fight for peace, democracy, and social transformation. I once read a quip (this was way back, perhaps in 1987) in the World Marxist Review from a Mexican communist decrying the fact that if only took two Leftists to come up with five political parties and 'movements' between them. Our challenge as communists, socialists, leftists, anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, revolutionaries - whatever label we choose to pin on our lapels - is to combine our profound transformational visions with the hungry and urgent aspirations of millions of ordinary world citizens who have never heard of or read from Mao, Marx, Regis Debray, Che Guevara, Castro, Cabral, Chris Hani, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin, Angela Davis, Thomas Sankara, Maurice Bishop, Louis Althusser, Gyorgy Lukacs, Aijaz Ahmed, Terry Eagleton, CLR James, Kwame Nkrumah, Emmanuel 'Blade' Nzimande, Mahmood Mamdani, Yash Tandon, or Issa Shivji. We cannot afford the luxury of cynicism or the delusional complacency of insisting that our fractious little sects are the ones that will save global humanity from the perfidy of the capitalist monster.

This does not mean capitulating however to the wishy-washy liberal democrats or the flip-flopping rightward-drifting social democrats the world over. It does not mean, as it did for a whole bunch of communist and leftist parties in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, liquidating our revolutionary formations, abdicating our ideological principles, and stampeding to amorphous alliances.

Obama's historic triumph is therefore both a welcome democratic breakthrough as well as a challenge to all progressive humanity to keep their eyes on the ultimate democratic and revolutionary prize. This puts the accent on learning from and building on the massive, efficient machine that created the American popular movement for democracy, a machine that has now placed the son of a Kenyan foreign student and the daughter of American working-class parents in the most powerful office in the world.

(1) Otto Kuusinen, Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, pp.222-7.

OBAMA-RAMA: "Dear Brother Obama..." Alice Walker's Letter to Obama

OBAMA-RAMA: Because something changed on Nov 4th...but I'm not sure what.

Dear Brother Obama,

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us
being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you
know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But
seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year
after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be
struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost
more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended
to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of
all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place.
It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the
generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of
Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually
appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your
rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is
a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster
that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for
bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you
do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a
schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your
gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your
family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon
become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their
wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles
so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors . This is no way to
lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about
all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax.
From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is
all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless
cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they
can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear
to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the
reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most
damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those
feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a
certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to
have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in
disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of
the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we
understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a
Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner."
There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture,
no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has
already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We
see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by
the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts
the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the
soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All
else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to
peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and
majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do
gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is
that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept
happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us,
lighting our way, and brightening the world.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker

Introducing the series OBAMA-RAMA

"We ain't ready to see a Black President." -Tupac Shakur



Tupac was wrong.

So, what is my reaction to the election of Barack Obama?

If you read my first post about Obama, The Muslim Manchurian Candidate, you'd expect that I'm probably a tad sceptical of the wave of OBAMANIA. The choice of Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff just confirmed all my worries.

But as a Black person, I still know just what the election of a Black man as President of the United States of America means, particularly to African Americans. I was crying Tuesday night along with Jesse Jackson and Oprah. I can't help that.

I am also just so excited by how the American public, particularly youth, were galvanized to go out and vote. I believe that this was the highest voter turn-out in America's history. Now that is CHANGE!

The truth is I am ambivalent.

Part of me wants to get swept away by OBAMANIA and part of me wants to drag everyone who is being swept away out of the water and smack them into consciousness.

This series is about my ambivalence.

OBAMA-RAMA includes my own reflections on the election as well as the writings of other writers who have written interesting pieces about Obama or letters to Obama.

Some of my posts will be serious but some will be "tongue in cheek". I'll be submitting posts regularly to the series leading up to the January 20th inauguration of Obama as President of the US of A.

Oniyemofe: The Story of a Name

When I was born the name on my birth certificate wasn't name I have now. My father's last name was Oniyemofe. When I was 5 years old, after my parents' divorce and my father's deportation, I was issued a new birth certificate with a new name, my mother's.

My mother's divorce documents as well as an intermediate Spanish textbook had my father's name, Oniyemofe, on them so I was always aware that this name had once been mine.

As I grew older and learned more about Nigeria I became curious to know what ethnic group my father came from. I realized that the name Oniyemofe (which I had grown up pronouncing as O-nee-ya-moff but I would later learn should be pronouced as O-nee-yay-mo-fay) was the key to answering this question. So, I ask any Nigerian I ran into what the meaning of Oniyemofe was.

The first Nigerians I met in Ottawa were all Yoruba. This was a good thing as it ended up that Oniyemofe was a Yoruba name. However, finding out that my father was most likely as Yoruba if his last name was Oniyemofe just ended up leading to more questions...this time posed by the Yoruba themselves. You see Oniyemofe is not a real Yoruba family name. It is actually a sentence. I remember one Yoruba remarked accusatorily that Oniyemofe was a name created in order to sound like my family was royalty. I had to explain that as I had no real memory of my father and no contact with him or his family it obviously followed that I had absolutely no knowledge of the Yoruba language and therefore would not be able to fabricate a royal sounding Yoruba family name if my life depended on it.

The strangeness of the name Oniyemofe is what eventually led to me being able to find my father. The only Oniyemofes in the world are my father's relatives. When I went to the Nigerian High Commission in my mid-twenties in order to see if I could find any documents relating to my father there the staff immediately recognized the name. It ends up my uncle Simeon was a career diplomat and so many other Nigerian diplomats knew of him and remembered this name. To make a very long story short, any Nigerians who had met an Oniyemofe remembered as it is such a peculiar name and eventually I was led to my father.

It ended up that my father wasn't Yoruba at all although he did grow up in the predominatly Yoruba state of Ondo. But his family was from the Arogbo Ijaw community. So why does he have a Yoruba last name?

It ends up that my great grandmother was Yoruba. She was purchased by my great great grandfather as a slave when she was still a small child. She was inherited by my grandfather and became his concubine. One of her sons, my grandfather, used to be called Oniyemofe by her as a pet name. Oniyemofe means "The person I love" in the Ijebu Yoruba dialect. Eventually, when my grandfather was an adult he helped his mother trace her origins to the Yoruba town of Imakun near Ijebu-Ode.My grandfather chose to take the name Oniyemofe as his family name out of the love and respect he had for his mother.

And that is the story of the name Oniyemofe.