Carribean Sings Support

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Caribbean sings support for Obama

Tuesday, April 1 2008

click on pic to zoom inRoger George...« prev photo next photo »

OBAMA GIRL, move over. Your I?ve Got a Crush on Obama video has got some rhythmic competition and it comes in the form of reggae and calypso from some hot Caribbean icons.

With big-name US celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney already stumping for him, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is also striking a chord with Caribbean-born artistes.

On the Internet video sharing site YouTube, the pulsating steel-pan fused Barack the Magnificent, by The Mighty Sparrow, has gotten more than 70,000 hits. Earlier this month, Jamaican reggae dancehall crooner Cocoa Tea released ?Barack Obahama,? a laid-back reggae-tinged tribute that tells listeners, ?This is not about class nor colour, race nor creed. Make no mistake it?s the changes . . . what the Americans need.??

Calypsonian Roger George is finishing up a remake of his calypso-inspired ?One Fine Morning? with new lyrics by David Rudder, endorsing Obama?s message of change.

The trend is not just another instance of pop culture and politics merging in a presidential campaign that have hip-hop stars like Jay-Z and Wyclef Jean endorsing Obama from center stage. It?s an example of the Illinois senator?s growing appeal beyond US borders and the global excitement enveloping his campaign and candidacy ? even among those who can?t vote.

If the race were to be judged solely by the candidates? perceived foreign policy positions, then Caribbean natives might be singing Hillary Clinton?s praises because of the sentimental attachment to her husband, Bill, who visited several Caribbean nations as president. But in a region that is as diverse as Obama himself, it?s the optimism he espouses and the promise of a new day that?s resonating with many Caribbean natives, some of whom are now questioning their loyalty to Clinton.

?Barack is not preaching blackness or browness. He?s speaking truth,?? Sparrow said.

Regarded as the king of calypso, the Grenadian-born bard, who once immortalised former President Clinton with the song ?Doh Touch Meh President? in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky impeachment scandal, said he was inspired by Obama long before his presidential bid. But it wasn?t until learning more about Obama?s background and wide-ranging appeal that he decided to pen these words:

?Irrespective 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. . . . He stood his ground when the war was merely a conception. He said it was wrong so he did not go along.??

?He?s no ordinary man,?? said Sparrow, who calls Obama a man of vision with the wisdom of Solomon, the biblical king of Israel. ?I see people my age in the 70s, 80s, 60s, 50s screaming out in appreciation like when the Beatles first came to America. I can?t believe that older people would react that way. That is one of the reasons why I believe he was sent by the Messiah.??

Like Sparrow, reggae singer Coca Tea, whose real name is Calvin Scott, says he, too, was drawn to Obama?s message.

?When I see the younger generation in America come out and support Barack Obama and say they want to see all of these things stop; they want a change in Washington where people can sit down and have dialogue with different parts of the world, that really captivated my attention and I had to add my voice to it,?? the star said in a telephone interview from his studio in Jamaica.

Said Roger George, who initially supported Hillary Clinton: ?Every voice makes a difference, and if we can all come together as a Caribbean unit ? then we can make a huge difference.??

The Obama-Caribbean phenomenon isn?t just isolated to songs. His speech on the economy in which he quoted Caribbean-born founding father Alexander Hamilton is getting rave reviews on Caribbean listserves.

Meanwhile, his chances are being debated on Jamaican blogs, his speeches are the subject of dinner-time debate in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods, and his promise is among the chatter on the streets of Havana.

Even in Europe, where French newspapers have translated Obama?s now famous speech on race, Caribbean natives are following the campaign.

?He?s an American story,?? said Guetty Felin, a Haitian-born Paris-based documentary filmmaker who recently spent several weeks in Texas following the candidates and speaking to supporters as part of a made-for-French TV documentary she and her husband are filming.

Felin, who is married to a French Jew and is raising two biracial boys, said Obama has brought a different flavour to American politics.

Four years younger than Obama, Felin says his appeal is beyond skin deep.

?We all can claim him,?? she said, referring to his diverse background as the biracial child of an African-immigrant father and white mother who lived in Hawaii and Indonesia.

?Black folk can claim him. White folk can claim him. Immigrants can claim him. Asians can claim him. That?s the powerful thing about him.??

But while these Caribbean supporters comprise a solid cheering section for the candidate, few or none have what the so-called US Obama Girl fans have: a vote.

(Story courtesy Miami Herald)

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Cocoa Tea Barak Obahama

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Mighty Sparrow Magnificent Barack

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Dr. Brad Blanton, author of 'Radical Honesty'

expertclick.com

Dr. Brad Blanton, former Independent Green candidate for congress, noted author of the nationwide bestseller ?Radical Honesty? (www.radicalhonesty.com) and author of four other books in the Radical Honesty series, a novel and a soon to be released autobiography, ?Some New Kind of Trailer Trash,? endorses Barack Obama for president.

?Along with Alice Walker and many others whose primary interest is in the truth, I endorse Barack Obama. I think Alice Walker, who is one of my most trusted and loved fellow beings on the planet, said it all when she said that we must build alliances not on ethnicity or gender, but on the commitment we see to the truth. She says, ?When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves.?

I can?t begin to say that any better. It gives me great pleasure to contribute my time, attention, money, moral support and endorsement to Barack Obama.
Brad Blanton, Ph.D., CEO of Radical Honesty Enterprises, President of The Center for Radical Honesty.
Brad Blanton (brad@radicalhonesty.com)
Radical Honesty Enterprises, Inc.
646 Shuler Lane
Stanley, VA 22851-2723
Phone : 540-778-2982

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PA Jews

jta.org

March 31, 2008

Dear Friend:

We are writing as American Jews from all across Pennsylvania to ask that you join us in supporting Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States.

Much has been said and many questions have been raised within the Jewish community in recent weeks about Senator Obama?s sensitivity to our community and his record on Israel. Unfortunately, much of the discourse has been based more on politics and positioning and less on facts and fair-minded analysis. We are writing to set the record straight and tell you why we intend to vote for Barack Obama.

Each of us ? us members of the Jewish community ? takes great pride in our commitment to Judaism. For us, the strategy of assigning guilt by association ? as has been to done to Senator Obama ? runs counter to our teachings and dishonors Jewish law and ethical traditions. Jewish law neither condemns thoughts nor does it denounce the musing of other?s hearts. By contrast, under Jewish law, we ? all of us ? are judged by our actions and our actions alone.

Senator Obama has earned our respect and gratitude because of his support for traditional Jewish values and his commitment to a peaceful and prosperous Israel. His support for Tikkun Olam ? ?repairing the world? ? and social justice is evident through his accomplishments in the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate. Without exception, Senator Obama has voted 100% consistently with the position of AIPAC on foreign aid and all other legislation and resolutions affecting Israel. These are the kind of actions for which we are grateful as a community. And, these are facts. For a more in depth look at the Senator?s strong record on issues that matter to our community, please click here.

Earlier this month, responding to withering criticism of the pastor of his church, Senator Obama delivered a courageous and powerful speech that demonstrated his unique ability to talk frankly about the continuing racial tension in our country. His speech itself will not lead to racial reconciliation or a complete understanding of our different religious and cultural traditions, but it has opened a new door for Americans of all backgrounds to begin speaking openly with one another. It is a speech that will serve as a teaching tool for all our citizens and will surely serve the interests of the Jewish community. In trying to place the speech in historical context, The New York Times editorialized that the ?Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy?s 1960 speech on religion??

While we are profoundly disturbed by the unpatriotic, bigoted and anti-Semitic comments of the retired pastor of Senator Obama?s church, we are moved that Barack stood up at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia earlier this month, and ?condemned in unequivocal terms the statements of Reverend Wright? and expressed his own views on issues near and dear to the heart and soul of the Jewish community.

Specifically, in repudiating the remarks of his former pastor, Senator Obama said Reverend Wright ?expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country?a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a great rabbinic scholar of the 20th century, was known equally for his theological scholarship and as well as for having marched alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.

Heschel once recalled that when marching in Selma, he was confronted by a host of people who were filled with hate and ignorance. They jeered at the Rabbi who afterwards declared to his fellow Jews: ?When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying.? Later, Heschel would recount that while he had always found comfort in his Siddur, his prayer book, it was in Selma where he learned to pray with his feet as well.

We have each chosen to pray with our feet and stand with Barack Obama because he is sensitive to the issues of the Jewish community and a stalwart supporter of Israel.

We respectfully ask that you stand with Senator Barack Obama and vote for him on April 22.

The Honorable Josh Shapiro
Deputy Speaker, Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Abington, PA

The Honorable Daylin Leach
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Ardmore, PA

Rabbi Robyn Frisch
Rydal, PA

Rabbi Seth Frisch
Rydal, PA

Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer
Philadelphia, PA

Rabbi Jonathan H. Gerard
Easton, PA

Rabbi David A. Teutsch
Philadelphia, PA

Rabbi Joshua Waxman
Fort Washington, PA

Robert S. Adelson
Merion, PA

David Ainsman
Pittsburgh, PA

Meryl Ainsman
Pittsburgh, PA

Mark Alderman
Bryn Mawr, PA

Marian Allen
Pittsburgh, PA

Tom Allen
Pittsburgh, PA

Irl Barg
Chester County, PA

Henri J. Barkey
International Relations Dept., Lehigh University
Allentown, PA

Dr. Steve Barrer
Abington, PA

Daniel Berger, Esq.
Philadelphia, PA

Todd W. Bernstein
Philadelphia, PA

James D. Bloom
Muhlenberg College
Allentown, PA

Peter Buttenwieser
Philadelphia, PA

Daniel Clearfield
Harrisburg, PA

Carl Cohen
Pittsburgh, PA

Dan Cohen,
Pittsburgh, PA

Hillary Cohen
Pittsburgh, PA

Marcia Cooper
Pittsburgh, PA

Mickie Diamond
Pittsburgh, PA

David Ehrenwerth
Pittsburgh, PA

Judy Ehrenwerth
Pittsburgh, PA

Justin Ehrenwerth
Pittsburgh, PA

Bradley T. Forman
Harrisburg, PA

Sue Friedberg
Pittsburgh, PA

Aaron J. Friewald, Esq.
Wynnewood, PA

Jeffrey Frutkin
Spring House, PA

Serena Fujita
Bucknell University
Lewisburg PA

Bernard Gerber,
Berks County, PA

Susan Golomb
Pittsburgh, PA

Stephen M. Goodman
Philadelphia, PA

Mahnaz Harrison
Pittsburgh, PA

Ross Harrison
Pittsburgh, PA

Rick Horowitz
Wynnewood, PA

Ruth Horowitz
Wynnewood, PA

Eve Klothen, Esq.
Swarthmore, PA

Joseph Kohn, Esq.
Devon, PA

Dean Kross, M.D.
Pittsburgh, PA

David Landau
Wallingford, PA

Clifford Levine, Esq.
Pittsburgh, PA

Rosanne M. Levine
Pittsburgh, PA

Daniel E. Loeb
Publisher, Philadelphia Jewish Voice
Philadelphia, PA

Cathy Lewis Long
Pittsburgh, PA

Andrea M. Lowenstein
Pittsburgh, PA

Michael E. Lowenstein
Pittsburgh, PA

Jules Mermelstein
Township Commissioner
Upper Dublin, PA

Morey Myers, Esq.
Scranton PA

Sondra Myers
Scranton, PA

Jacob Naveh
Pittsburgh, PA

Todd Reidbord
Pittsburgh, PA

Stephan Rosenfeld
Jenkintown, PA

Jeff Shell
Philadelphia, PA

Laura Shell
Penn Valley, PA

Stephanie Shell
Ardmore, PA

Carl Shuman,
Harrisburg, PA

Alan Siger
Pittsburgh, PA

Patricia Siger
Pittsburgh, PA

Prof. Lawrence Silberstein
Director, Berman Center for Jewish Studies, Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA

Larry Silverman
Pittsburgh, PA

Roger Simon
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA

Jill Stein
Villanova, PA

Lem Tarshis
Blue Bell, PA

Jill Zipin
Philadelphia, PA

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Laborers District Council of Metro Philadelphia

AP Press

Clinton has a larger number of unions on her side: 12 AFL-CIO member unions ? including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers and the International Association of Machinists ? and one Change to Win union, the United Farm Workers.

Obama is backed by some politically powerful unions as well: Change to Win's Teamsters, SEIU, UNITE HERE and United Food and Commercial Workers ? as well as the Change to Win organization and five smaller AFL-CIO unions. Obama picked up the endorsement Tuesday from the 10,000-member Laborers District Council of Metro Philadelphia.

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Alice Walker

theRoot.com

Lest We Forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave.

By Alice Walker | TheRoot.com

The author argues that we must build alliances not on ethnicity or gender, but on truth.

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March 27, 2008

I HAVE COME home from a long stay in Mexico to find ? because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.

When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would.

My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May. They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof, ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style.

We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the dairy cows herself.

When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that "Jane" and "Dick" had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter.

The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea ? so kept from black people it had been ? that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free.

I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans ?black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves.

True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth's people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth.

I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.

And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States. My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama. I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces' case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most North American families ? and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American genes ? we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it.

When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old white women and men who do.

Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.

We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Namaste;

And with all my love,

Alice Walker

Cazul

Northern California

First Day of Spring

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