Harlem gaat uit zijn dak
Weblog Washington
Harrie van Veen
5-11-2008 09:12
125th Street, Harlem, 01.00 uur (lokale tijd) – De overwinning van Barack Obama werd in Harlem uitgebreid gevierd. Op 125th Street, de hoofdstraat van ‘de zwarte hoofdstad’ van Amerika, barstte direct nadat Barack Obama tot president werd gekozen, een volksfeest los, alsof het wereldkampioenschap voetbal, of een andere meer Amerikaanse sport, was gewonnen.
Centraal in de feestvreugde waren twee oude metrostellen die om onverklaarbare redenen op trucks door de straten reden en een geliefd object werden om te beklimmen.
Twee uur eerder gebeurde het ongelooflijke. Obama werd uitgeroepen tot president.
Op de radio klonk het ten slotte zo:
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Hartstikke fijn dat Obama heeft gewonnen!
In de hoop dat deze president meer rust in de wereld kan brengen met andere wereldleiders zodat mensen onderling vreedzaam kunnen leven.
“Verandering begint met verandering van bewustzijn”.
Ik weet nog niet of we blij moeten zijn.
Er komt zeker verandering, maar waarheen weet niemand.
Ik denk dat het economisch wel de betere president zal zijn, maar als het morele denkkader van de gemiddelde amerikaan hetzelfde proces ondergaat dan wij hier onder paars hebben gehad, dan zijn de rapen pas echt gaar. Die puinhopen zijn wij nog steeds niet te boven.
Afwachten dus.
History with a black president to white hous of America
Of Harlem is inderdaad niet meer die “zwarte wijk” die het vroeger was (En dat is volgens mij tegenwoordig ook zo) of de beelden komen uit een heel andere wijk.
Fantastisch is dit? Dit is een revolutie voor de gekleurde amerikaan, nog geen veertig jaar geleden mochten de blanken en zwarten niet eens samen reizen in de bus en kijk pakweg 40 jaar later.. Obama is president… Ik hoop dat hij overleefd in die 4 jaar en dat er geen aanslagen op hem plaats vinden
mvg Richard
@Paul
De neonlichten van het Apollo Theater waren anders duidelijk genoeg in beeld.
mijn familie en ik vinden hem een beetje op kennedey lijken. een frisse wind. ik hoop alleen dat Obama niet net als kennedy vermoord word.
Barack Obama is PRESIDENT VAN DE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA geworden, maar in de eerste plaats is hij een mens van vlees en bloed net zoals ‘alle mensen’ die overal op onze Planeet Aarde leven of hun best doen om te ‘over’leven. Middels zijn speeches heeft hij de wereld laten weten dat hij zich heel goed bewust is van zijn éénheid met allen op Moeder Aarde.
) is dat NEDERLAND met zijn ONDERWIJS, CULTUUR en WELZIJNSBELEID grondig ontdoet van discriminatoire instrumenten of elementen die bijvoorbeeld doorspijpelen in de VIA regeling en voorkeur van de Minister van OCW voor “NEDERLANDS’ als ‘INSTRUCTIETAAL’ op de Nederlandse Antillenen, terwijl de eilanden met name ‘PAPIAMENTU’ als MOEDERTAAL kennen. Een VEELZIJDIGE TAAL!
In de tweede plaats is hij een vrouw-, en kindvriendelijke man met ‘HOGE IDEALEN’ met betrekking tot de ‘ALGEHELE’ MENSHEID. Zijn bewustzijnsniveau, welke geuit wordt in zijn denken, voelen en handelen, is doordrenkt van ‘LIEFDE’ in de ruimste zin des woords en hij draagt zijn ‘VERANTWOORDELIJKHEID’ als ‘WERELDBURGER’ met gepaste “TOEWIJDING”! Zijn talenten heeft hij ingezet om een ‘WARE’ LEIDER te worden al lang voordat hij aan zijn ‘run’ voor de presidentschap van de USA begon. Een doel dat hij GELUKKIG bereikt heeft met behulp van vele ‘gedreven’ medemensen overal in de wereld.
Pas op de derde plaats is het van belang te melden dat hij als eerste als “HERKENBARE DUBBELBLOED”, straks de Verenigde Staten van Amerika vanuit het “WITTE HUIS” zal gaan regeren. Het is een ZEER heuglijk en historische feit, die we mogen en zelfs moeten benadrukken, maar dan alleen om de WEZENLIJKE BROEDERSCHAP DER MENSHEID te benadrukken en na te blijven streven!
Mijn grootste WENS (vele zijn eerder vervuld dan ik voor mogelijk hield
Barack Obama is een ‘OPRECHTE OPBOUWWERKER’ en ik weet zeker dat hij beide beleidsinstrumenten niet zal kunnen verenigen met zijn “VISIE VAN GELIJKHEID en BROEDERSCHAP”!
Ik roep bij deze ook alle Nederlandse burger – die dit lezen – op om de burgers Nederlandse Antillen te steunen in hun strijd voor GELIJKE BEHANDELING en GELIJKE KANSEN binnen het KONINKRIJK DER NEDERLAND.
LET’S HELP OBAMA AND OURSELVES, YES WE CAN!!!
Nog maar een paar jaar geleden riepen gefrustreerde rappers ”we ain’t ready for a black president”. En zie hier… In 2008 is ie er dan echt.
Nu hopen dat ie de hoge verwachtingen waar kan maken…
YES WE CAN…. But you have to be straight otherwise NO YOU CAN’T. Zwarten hebben overweldigend (75 % van de zwarte vrouwen!) tegen het homohuwelijk in Californië gestemd terwijl ze tegelijkertijd zogenaamd voor ‘Change’ stemden. Een zeer zeer bitterzoete dag en een zwarte dolk in de rug van de homo’s. Een reactie van 365gay.com:
‘Well, it’s over. The 2008 Presidential Election is history. A benign bigot won who expected our unconditional support but who, in turn, would not even speak up for our right to be treated as equals and to protect the one‘s we love. By Obama’s incessant, and unethical, repetition of: “I believe marriage is between a Man and Woman” crap he gave permission for voters in his own party of “Hope” and “Equality for All” to vote Yes for Obama and Yes for Proposition 8 in California.
YES WE CAN! …Indeed.
Thanks for your support, Obama! I guess we got what we deserved for being so naïve. We are politically expendable. Nothing is going to change that fact any time soon either. Fear drove most of us to support a candidate who does not support us. He does view us as equals — no matter what his finely tailored speeches profess to his immense tapestry comprising millions of disciples loosely stitched together by White guilt, Black disenfranchisement, Blue-Collar displacement and Gay desperation.
Yet how committed is Obama to some of his congregation? Imagine the mixed message Obama sent to the people of California — especially in the minority community. After all, how many of them must have asked this to themselves, as the went to vote: “Well, Obama is against homosexuals getting married — so why should we be for it. Obama is a fair and reasonable man, so it must be wrong. Like he said, in so many words, it’s not right for queers to get married. They can go sit at another table. The Marriage Table is reserved for “god’s chosen people” — for heterosexuals only.” Or so says our great, fair-minded, emancipator of the downtrodden.
Yes, thanks for nothing, Obama. One word, just one f**king word, just a simple: “Vote NO on Proposition 8” might have made the difference in many people’s minds – especially in the uneducated minority community who relish the thought of the role of a formerly oppressed minority being reversed so that they can take out their angst by kicking another minority in the teeth.
Tragically, far too many in racial minority communities believe that the road to status quo membership in society is the find another minority to take their place at the bottom of the social heap. And the religious excuses they use are lame rationalization for their minority targeted, anti-social, bigoted, vile behavior. It is the same conduct attributed to how White Trash treated Blacks in the 1960s in the South. To paraphrase Shakespeare: The play is the same, only the actors have changed roles.
Barrack Obama made reference to us in the GLBT community during his acceptance speech Nov. 3, 2008, where we were sandwiched somewhere between Blacks and Whites and Disabled People. I listen to his soaring rhetoric with sadness — erudite and inspiring, but still filled with empty, meaningless words that I doubt will ever find application.
Blacks, Latinos, and other minorities don’t need him to fight for their civil rights anymore. The only minority left in the United States against whom it is legal to discriminate is the GLBT community. Like a good lawyer, Obama is both comprehensive and evasive in his message of “inclusion” involving us — which usually ends with an segregationist scheme. Where is the unqualified outrage that Robert Kennedy showed when he spoke out against racism before his own tragic life was ended by an assassin’s bullet? Where is the uncompromising convictions of a Lyndon Johnson who knew the Democratic party would lose the South if he pushed for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act? But Johnson pushed for its passage anyway.
Blacks could just have been ignored before the riots of the 60s. They were not that essential in the political scheme of things on Capital Hill. But, at their own political risks, many White politicians put their political careers on the line to stand up for what was right. No minority in this country would ever achieve equality without a fair judiciary and without political leadership that set the wheels of justice in motion.
For those who say that only the courts shall be the final arbitrators of our fate, I say you are wrong. When Brown vs. The Topeka Board of Education was decided the Eisenhower Republican administration was already on board to end segregation in America. When Loving vs. Virginia was decided, the political climate in Washington (after the 1964 Civil Rights Act) was already in favor of quietly removing the last racial barriers dividing the races in America. And even though the majority of Americans still were against interracial marriage, after the Supreme Court Ruling in 1967, there was no political upheaval over it.
So who now in American politics is our champion? Who now would risk any of their political capital for us? All we are told is to be quiet and to let things happen gradually behind the scenes. Our leaders in the GLBT community tells us to be patient. But Baby-steps is quickly becoming the new definition for bullsh*t. Radical changes rarely happen in slow motion. Demands for equality are never heard if they are whispered.
Our own history should inform us. Where would the GLBT rights movement have been without Stonewall to get the ball rolling. Also contributory, the GLBT organization called ACT-UP was considered by many mainstream Gays as being too “militant” but they brought public awareness to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s in ways that the mainstream, Gay unfriendly, media would never willingly do. ACT-UP’s public acts of civil disobedience made people see the epidemic in ways that quiet talk behind closed doors could never accomplish.
We need a pro-active organization like that now to publicly demand our rights. Scream, shout, lie down in the streets and tie up traffic. Chain yourselves by the hundreds, all over the country, to the doors of Marriage License Bureaus if that’s what it takes to show we are serious. How can we expect other people to understand that Rights are not a gift to be bestowed or taken away by any benign or hostile majority. Equal Rights, just like every other American’s Rights, belong to us too at birth and cannot be taken away.
Now ask yourself this about our newly elected President, Ask yourself: if some other minority was the object of a hateful proposition that would have denied them equal citizenship, would Barrack Obama have been so silent on it? I think not. But see how easily he makes the transition from lofty platitudes and his glorious rhetoric of “inclusion” and “equality” to jumping aboard the hate-wagon rolling over our bodies and the bodies of those we love — that is, if that wagon just happens to be moving in the direction he wants to go.
And please don’t dredge up that tired old chestnut of “well, if he openly supported our rights, he wouldn’t win”. The fact of the matter is that Obama didn’t have to lock himself into the indefensible position of opposing our equality while supporting an apartheid system of laws created just for our management. He did not have to ride the wave of bigotry to election.
When asked about marriage equality, he could have simply said that the question should be left up to the states (a position I don’t agree with any more than interracial marriage should be allowed to just remain a state issue), never-the-less, he could have just left it at that. But no, he had to be over-emphatic in his denunciation of same-sex marriage equality at every opportunity. What kind of “friend” to our community is that?
Obama took tens of millions of dollars from us for his campaign and tens of millions of votes from us to further his ambitions and then he turns his back on us to let the wolves come together to rip us to shreds — many of whom were his strongest supporters, in his own race, who joined with the very same people they despised in the Republican party. All the while, Obama turned a blind eye to this blood-fest. Is that the kind of Messianic leader the GLBT community has been waiting for? If I where a religious person, I’d say it sound more like the coming of the anti-Christ.
I did not vote for Obama. My Gay neighbor, at first, said that he would never vote for Obama either. But then, for whatever reason, he jumped on board the bandwagon. I suppose the high school football lure of being on the winning side is like an irresistible narcotic enticement too much for some people with weaker convictions to resist. It didn’t matter much though, because we both live in the Reddest of Red States — Kansas. So, a symbolic protest vote against Obama would not have altered the election one bit.
I may have even held my nose and voted for Obama if I lived in a Swing State because the thought of a malignant bigot being elected over a benign bigot would be too great a risk even for me to imagine. It is so tragic that we only have such unhealthy choices to make. It is really time we start looking for a viable third party, at least in Congress to start — the Presidency later.
If Joe Lieberman could control the agenda with just his one vote in the Senate, a third party of around ten percent of the members of Congress could give maximum representation to a minority such as ours. A third party would be a powerbroker and could caucus with either party for control of Congress and in setting political agenda on a quid pro quo basis. Coalitions could be formed and “orphan” legislation (that is legislation that no party wants to go out on the limb for alone) could be passed.
We own nothing to the Democratic Party because they have given us nothing but betrayal or indifference in return. I really wanted to like Obama, but I don’t believe he has the courage to stick his neck out for us like President Johnson did for Black folk. I’d be pleasantly surprised if I am wrong. But I will not hold my breath until then.’