Brooklyn Ron

Psst. Dear 'Post Racial' America: Al Sharpton Isn't Leaving

There he was, earlier this month in the run-up to tomorrow's long-awaited inauguration of its first African-American president.

Yes, that was the Rev. Al Shaprton being welcomed and embraced (in Philadelphia on Jan. 8) by George W. Bush, who thanked Sharpton for his support of Bush's controversial No Child Left Behind education policy.

There's talk all over the country, and the world, about a new post-racial America that is putting its racial obsessions and injustices behind it.

There's some validity in the assessment, given the literal and figurative transformation scheduled to occur tomorrow, Inauguration Day.

But how has this transformation transformed Rev. Al Shaprton?

Well, the change has not been as obvious with Sharpton as it's been, for example, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Jackson (who had issues with Barack Obama along the road and once said -- sotto vocce but recorded -- that he wanted to cut Obama's private parts off) leaves us with the enduring image of him weeping as Obama was elected President.

But with Sharpton, one gets the impression he's on the sidelines, not quite really appreciating what Obama means to the majority of Americans.

Sharpton's hesitancy about Obama was revealed during the 2004 Democratic National Convention when he referred, in his speech, to the then up-and-coming Illinois senator as "Obama Baracka."

Sharpton is not known for slips of the tongue and many believed he was revealing a distaste for Obama as inauthentic and, well, a challenge to Sharpton's primacy on the race issue.

Race and the uses of it have always been Sharpton's raison d'etre and his means of survival. 

In many ways, it's truly amazing that he's reached such heights, given his an extraordinary background that included being an FBI informant, even then laboring around the question of race.

His work with the federal agency -- to try to find black revolutionaries in the early 1980s -- is well documented, as are his flirtations over the years with Republican politicians seeking to keep Democratic challengers at bay.

And so, who knows what Rev. Sharpton is thinking or planning now -- if planning even means more than the next moment.

One thing the world should remember always about Rev. Sharpton: That he has displayed an extraordinarily courageous instinct over the years, on the issue of racial killings of blacks in New York City.

The police killing of African immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999, one of the most horrid and cold-blooded cases in the annals of police abuse, rose as high as it did on the public agenda, thanks to the energies and passion of Sharpton.

This was true more recently in the (somewhat) similar killing of Sean Bell.

Al Shaprton will live on after Inauguration Day, as talk of a new, post-racial America continues.

But few, likely, will apply the term to Sharpton, whose whole being has rested on the reality of race.

What? It's Not Still Christmas? Then Why Was I (Ba)Rockin Around the Tree?

Maybe it's the upcoming inauguration.

Maybe it's a combination of that and the Christmasy snow.

But I wanted to throw up this tune that I sang and strummed, like a lone caroler who's maybe had one too many.

It's time to Barack Around the Christmas Tree!

Obama Autobio Shows Instinctive Revulsion at 'Pay-Me' Political Tradition of Chicago

The nation, or the mainstream journalism corner of it, has been twittering with speculation over Barack Obama's involvement with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

What did Barack or his people say to the apparently corrupt guv, and when did they say it?

The answers to that are soon to come.

But there's another question to be asked.

What does Barack Obama really think -- we mean, deep down inside -- about Blagojevich's pay-to-play, Chicago-style politics?

The answer is in black and white.

A section of Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father," has an interesting and relevant scene in which Obama, as a young community organizer in Chicago, discusses with a colleague their efforts to start a counseling programs for hard-up Chicago public school students.

Right away, the activists are faced with a principal who tells them that, of course, he will support their plan, but then right away hands them résumés of relatives he would like the new program to hire.

Barack and his buddy are stunned by the quid-pro-quo gesture and are deeply affected by it.

One suspects that the instincts revealed in the account are honestly expressed and that they do, in fact, form the rough basis of the author's world outlook. The big question, of course, is to what degree those natural feelings were overcome or compromised by Obama's later, and very successful, life as a Chicago politician.

[To read the section of the book, click this sentence.]

[There's also, by the way, a pdf in which you can read a fuller account, ten pages, that leads up to the section in the above link. That pdf was posted by a politically progressive investor who has had affection for Obama. Click here to open it.]

[Note that the above photo of Obama as a thoughtful youngster is from Time magazine's special, which includes old and previously unpublished photos obtained by the publication. Visit Time's photo gallery here.]

Brits Seems to Love (and Read the Books of) the Next U.S. President

By Milverton (Tony) Wallace

(Guest Columnist, journalist and educator living in Britain)

Now here's something remarkable, and perhaps unique. When was the last time a president or president-elect of the United States or any other country has had two books at the top of the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic?

On the week-ending of 24 November, Barack Obama's two books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father, were number one and two the New York Times (US) and the Observer (UK) non-fiction paperback bestseller lists.

Interestingly, the order is different for each list: on the NYT chart, Audacity is number one with Dreams at number two; on the Observer chart, Dreams (total UK sales 79, 919) is number one and Audacity (total UK sales 95, 950) is number two. The NYT doesn't give sales figures.

Of course, Obama will not be the first scholarly American president. Several towering intellectual figures have occupied that post, including Jefferson, Franklin and John Quincy Adams, and Ulysses S. Grant wrote a bestselling memoir; but none has dominated the bestselling charts as much as Obama. (Dreams has been on the NYT list for 122 weeks and Audacity for 47 weeks).

And here's a story to warm the cockles of all poetry lovers. (click here.)

The picture above, taken on 7 November, three days after the election, shows Obama carrying a copy of the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott's 500 page "Collected Poems 1948-1984". [Credit to AFP/GETTY IMAGES.]

So not only are you lucky people getting a literary (and literate!) president, you'll be having a poetry lover in the White House as well. Can it get any better?

Derek Walcott, by the way, is a native of St. Lucia in the Caribbean, and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

Morning of the Magicians: Obama and Clinton Transcend Old Age Politics as They Come Full Circle

For die hard Obama supporters whose passions reached zeniths during the primary campaign pitting him against Hillary Clinton, this is a moment of transformation, much indeed like the very day of That One's election.

And nowhere is this more true than in places of New York State where the support of Barack Obama ran highest, notably, the great borough of Brooklyn.

Clinton's reported acceptance of the invitation to be Secretary of States, and Bill Clinton's willingness to make concessions in his portfolio to accommodate concerns of Obama advisers, is like a truce beyond truces.

It is the ultimate reaching of understanding between ego-driven players who have the interests of their country and their party as high on their list of interests as their own ambitions, which are demonstrably very high.

This development is a true breaking of the mold, the dawning of a new style of managing and politics that brings to mind the awakenings of forty years ago when the thoughtful were perusing books like The Morning of the Magicians and other works that blended old traditions with new ones, all the better to open the inner eyes and see the way ahead.

 

Obama Election Highlights Transition in Williamsburg: Avant-garde of the New Brooklyn

Perhaps nothing has so clearly reflected Brooklyn's demographic changes as the election night clashes between police and young residents celebrating the victory of Barack Obama.

The most poetic reality of that evening and following morning was its similarity to past treatment of minorities, especially Latinos and Blacks, by police in New York City.

These Williamsburg revelers -- some of whom were soon to be arrestees -- were mostly young whites, politically progressive and representative of the social transformations that have hit the regal borough in the past decade or so.

The changes have upset some of the older folk, who at a Nov. 17 meeting expressed their frustrations with the new, noisier inhabitants; and the changes have also strained relations with police, tensions noted in a Brooklyn Paper article referring to the newcomers as "hipsters."

It was perhaps only to be expected that many of the hipsters, on election night, would have been armed with digital video cameras, leading to some interesting visual accounts of what transpired. One of the clipped reels has audio of the bygone song, "Stop, Hey, What's That Sound," which can be seen and heard by clicking below. (Note: another posted clip follows that one.)

Here's another that ends with a fellow saying he was arrested for "not being on the sidewalk."

The YouTube President: Obama Will Do Weekly Addresses on the Web

Franklin Delano Roosevelt [photo] was associated with "fireside chats" to the American people on radio; later presidents, beginning with John F. Kennedy, mastered the use of television.

Now comes Barack Obama as the post-boomer president who will do weekly broadcasts to the populace on, yup, YouTube.

In fact, President-elect Obama just launched the first of the weekly broadcasts he says he will continue into his presidency, which begins on January 20.

In this first weekly video, done in Obama's Chicago transition office on Friday, Obama makes clear how he differs from President Bush in how to deal with the financial crisis that's throwing the nation for a real loop.

Obama wants Congress, even in this lame duck session, to immediately begin doing more to help the unemployed. Bush has made it clear he feels pumping money directly into the financial markets is the better way to go.

Obama opens by mentioning today's meeting of the G-20 nations -- those with the world's biggest economies -- in Washington, and then he makes an exhortation to U.S. Congressmembers who are scheduled to meet next week:

"I urge them to pass at least a down-payment on a rescue plan that will create jobs, relieve the squeeze on families, and help get the economy growing again. In particular, we cannot afford to delay providing help for the more than one million Americans who will have exhausted their unemployment insurance by the end of this year."

Here's the whole four-minute video Obama did on Friday:

Wall Street's Downscale Values: Dow Dips as Barack Vows Help for Homeowners and Jobless

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped a hundred points while Barack Obama spoke of his plans to help the struggling middle class, pinched homeowners and the unemployed.

It was one of the strangest things in the history of modern television, to see sidebar images of the Dow sliding downward while Obama addressed the media, all on the same screen.

It was Obama's first press conference since his history-making election to the presidency.

Obama did not make shameless appeals to the dice-rollers of Wall Street, as George W. Bush did over the past couple of months, clearly trying to appease The Street with his offer of a trillion dollars, no strings attached.

You did not have to read between the lines to understand that Obama wants to attach some strings, in the form of loans and jobs that will feed those who do not live off investments.

That kind of thinking -- that kind of talk about investing in education and green projects to provide jobs for the jobless -- bores some Wall Streeters, and makes other Streeters angry. They pull their money back and the Dow drops.

What Wall Street wants is bucks invested in banks, no strings attached at all, no demands for limiting the Street's unseemly bonuses.

No, their desire in life is money, more money than you can shake a stick at.

There are many in country, however, who are only waiting for Justice to some day begin prosecuting those who wreaked this havoc on the country and the world, to begin prosecuting the criminals who hustled homeowners and honest investors out of their modest accounts and their modest American dreams.

Arriving in the Promised Land, as Twice Foretold in 1968

The night before he died, killed by an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tenn., Martin Luther King spoke as if he knew the end for him was near.

"I've seen the Promised Land," he said. "I may not get there with you; but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land."

He said he had no fear of any man and he had seen the coming of the glory of the Lord.

In a sense, that coming, the metaphorical arrival into the Promised Land, came today with the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States of America.

It should be noted also that in 1968, another great America fell by an assassin's bullet. That was the U.S. Senator from New York, Robert Kennedy, who before his death had eerily predicted that in 40 years, in other words in 2008, a black man -- or a Negro, as they said in those times -- would be elected president of the United States.

This is indeed a transformative moment in the history of America, in the history of the world.

Peace.

Long Lines of Humanity, on a Day When Hope, Too, Stretched for Miles

Most in the community of Lefferts Gardens waited for two and a half hours or more to vote today, a patient wait reflected well in the silent video above.

They gathered gleefully -- gleefully, except for a few understandable exceptions here and there -- on a long, long line that stretched from the public school on Parkside Avenue, between Bedford and Rogers Avenues, eeking around Bedford and then to Fenimore St. and from there back toward Rogers.

The poll workers, looking exasperated as they coped with broken machines and the uncomfortable heat of the basement where the voting booths were located.

Everyone with whom we spoke expressed a feeling of hope that, finally, a resolution of one of the country's enduring conflicts was approaching.

This would be, of course, the racial divide that countless Americans had -- until not so very long ago -- assumed would last as long as the republic itself.

You see, the vast majority of residents of Prospect Lefferts Gardens are of African descent, largely from the Caribbean, and the voters reflected the demgraphic make-up of the community.

Particularly under the mayoral regime of one Rudolph Giuliani, there was a sense in these parts that the odds were stacked against them, that the police, the power brokers and, to a degree, the elite in Washington cared little about their interests.

But this is changing.

They see a new day dawning. And the very least they could do was stand in line and wait for it to come.

[Video was shot by Benjamin Niemczyk and posted on YouTube. Thanks Benjamin.]