When I Meet Young People who Want to be an Obama

By Irami Osei-Frimpong (August 5, 2019)

The problem isn’t that Obama bought a 15 million dollar house. What else are you going to do with the money?

The problem is:

a)  that you all thought he was ever going to do anything for Black people that would jeopardize the family  buying a 15 million dollar house.

b)   he did it as a public servant who could have pushed for policies for Black communities, but pushed for policies that led to a 15 million dollar house, instead.

When I meet twenty year olds who want to be Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I am heartened. Ella Baker, I’m down. When I meet twenty year olds who want to be Huey Newton or Fred Hampton. I am heartened. Bayard Rustin. Same deal. When I meet 20 year olds who want to be Angela Davis. I think, right on. I hope they read her older stuff. However, when I meet twenty year olds who want to be Barack or Michelle Obama, I’m always sad, and I back away, with my hand on my wallet. 

I also keep my kids away from those people.

irami

 

 

 

Black People Need Good Governance Toward Justice

By Irami Osei-Frimpong (January 28, 2018)

I’ve been thinking about Ann Richards and Obama.

Everyone loves Ann Richards. I think she was great. Or at least I think she was fine. She won Texas without teaching people how to govern, so it snapped right back. Obama is similarly blessed. There are no principled Obama Democrats. The Obama coalition is held together by aesthetics, and insofar as it is held together by a vision of governance instead of aesthetics, it’s vaguely libertarian because that’s what you get when you have a governing coalition that’s held together by aesthetics. I suspect that this is why Obama was so good at electing GOP legislators and governors. He elected a lot of other Reagan Republicans, and he converted a lot of black people into being Reagan Republicans. Reagan was Goldwater Republican, and Goldwater Republicans are Libertarians, so it shouldn’t be that big of a surprised that Obama created so many Republicans. If folks deeply believed in his style of governance, they would eventually vote Republican, anyway.

Contrast that with FDR or even Kennedy. After they left office, there were still principled FDR and Kennedy Democrats who were convert by FDR or Kennedy.

The goal isn’t to get people to pull the Democrat lever this one time; the goal is to move people to a better vision of governance. Anything that’s not that is not going to enable black people to be free.

You can say that there are principled Clinton Democrats, but I think principled Clinton Democrats are snakes because that’s the principle of governance Bill Clinton taught America.

Black people, we are a people who need good governance more than anyone else in this nation, because we can’t be free until we see justice, and we can’t get justice without revolutionizing the US political structure towards justice for Black people. FDR’s revolution provided justice for white people at the expense of black people. We simply need the same quality of governance for everyone.

Black People, remember that white Democrats don’t care about racial justice for black people. They care about beating Republicans, and not offending too many of their white Republican cousins in the process.

Our politics is not and cannot be Democrat politics. Our politics is revolutionary politics, and when the Democrats balk at the kind of revolutionary politics we need to be made whole, we must, from time to time, shut Dems down.

irami

Is Obama a “Transformational” President?

 

By Chris Lowe  (June 29,2015)

This piece is dead wrong. Barack Obama is comparable to Grover Cleveland. We live in a time of narrow politics, and Obama has not had the juice to broaden them, nor the inclination.  Continue reading “Is Obama a “Transformational” President?”

The Sociopathic President

By Alexander N. Riccio

On September 23rd, the United Nations hosted a climate summit in New York that brought together political leaders from 125 nations including U.S. President Barak Obama. The event was intended to highlight the realities of an existential crisis to the human species, but our president made it a moment to reveal his sociopathic dismissal of life instead. Continue reading “The Sociopathic President”