BIO
Melise D. Huggins is a wombmyn who writes. Her musings on Obama and the historic campaign started long before this edition was conceptualized. With a PhD in Development Economics, she is out of academia and inhabits the stretches of independent thought and exploration as a public intellectual.
A global citizen, she currently resides in the Caribbean, having lived in Africa and the United States. She is an avid reader, poet, artist and conscious creative of various forms. You will soon be able to follow her other writings by blog, but in the meanwhile, find her on Facebook as ‘Maven Huggins’ and montmaven on Twitter.
BARACK OBAMA:
BEYOND, BETWEEN, BETWIXT AND PARTING
THE DEEP BLUE RED SEA
-Melise D. Huggins
INTRODUCTION
It is interesting and a bit odd for me to write about Barack Obama’s assent into the White House after the fact. It is like proclaiming the sight of a meteorite long after its afterglow has ebbed into ether. We have reached the pinnacle, and have descended into the mundane; the day to day activity of running the one declining Global Helm and Bastion of America as capitalism dies a slow and re-contrived and resuscitated bailout death.
The initial question, two years ago, when Barack Obama burst onto the American national and international political scene, for those who neither watched C-SPAN Senate broadcast, nor lived in Chicago, was: who was Obama? I, too, a woman of numerous cultural continental nationalities, the United States, Trinidad and Africa, wondered who he was. I had left the United States in 2003 just when the debutante was making his first ball; a meteoritic rise to legitimate fame if ever there was one. So, how did he do it? How did this Black man navigate through American blue and red politics to oversize the Clinton machinery, and to take away Hillary’s ticket? The unimaginable is unsustainable, many people thought. Yet, the man did, indeed, part the deep blue red sea.
The title of this chapter fits the magnitude of the man, in an attempt to capture, through a combination of personal reflection and a review of events with others, his myriad of identities and the innumerable landscapes in which he functions. The writing style, in prose and poetry, stems out of this critic’s difficulty in painting a complete, logical picture of Barack Obama, a phenomenon, but yet undefined; in truth, I believe that he is too big for us average humans to comprehend, and that he is headed for even higher ground than the American presidency. The impossibility of capturing the whole picture is a testament to the variety of his experiences, the mélange of life in parts that have yielded what many describe as a great man.
“The Deep Blue Red Sea” is a metaphor for the man, his character, its reaches and depth. It is also a hearkening to the politics of American government, which he is currently navigating to make more human. “Beyond, Between, Betwixt and Parting” alludes to Barack Obama’s seemingly supernatural ability to navigate the impossible to navigate; to part and pass through unscathed, metaphorical seas, such as, the Clinton machinery, the United States racial divide, partisan politics, the coming from obscurity to the pinnacle, the gap between peoples (Black, White, Muslims, Christians, Midwesterners, Coasters). In essence, Obama is the Black man who accomplishes a lot with great aplomb, charisma, and humble greatness. Now, months into his historic presidency, given the reality of the United States financial and world standing decline, and the refashioning of a new America, a New World Order, one asks: How will the president fare? What is his purpose and role? Did he come just to be the first Black American President? Or, did he come to realize a much bigger objective, such as creating a New World Order, presiding over a coming Third World War, or some other meltdown for which the American economy is just dry run, window dressing? We do not intend to answer those questions, but merely to give one perspective on Obama’s ride to the international stage and glory.
OBAMA AS SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR
In an attempt to encapsulate my various threads on Obama, to capture his phenomenon as a spiritual being, I remember the book adapted to the movie, The Spook Who Sat by the Door. It is about a black man who studies, learns and monitors the ways of the establishment to rise up and beat it and supplant the teacher with his own methods. The astonishing fact is that the man did what he did for so many years, undetected, unopposed, undercover, by stealth[1]
The metaphor is applied here with various meanings: “spook” as a racial identifier; a spy working through and up the rank but, most significantly, teaching and learning to the extent that the student supplants the teacher as oracle of wisdom, knowledge and understanding. In twenty-first century terms, particularly because of his identity as a Black man in America, Barack Obama is the modern-day Spook who sat by various doors and made his way into the White House.
Now, the movie poses the question: “What if a modern black hero built a guerrilla army made up of street gangs and incited armed black revolution in America? What would that look like?” It should be understood that this is not of interest in this context. I doubt whether Barack Obama has the content of character and the background to live that particular line as described by Ivan Dixon and Sam Greenlee. What is peculiar, however, is that Barack Obama has, indeed, created an army, not of “Black Revolutionaries”, but of twenty-first century revolutionaries, an army of youth, genuine change-makers, and hope creators galore. The metaphorical overlaps become rather interesting, however, when one counts the resonance and synchronicity between the fiction and the facts of Obama’s life. Chicago is the common setting. Both Barack and the movie protagonist work up front in non-profit, community organizations. Of the movie character, it is said: “He has a super square, black yuppie lifestyle, but the whole time he is organizing behind the scenes to create revolutionary conditions; and people are in the streets looking for a brighter day.” All of this is true of Barack Obama in 2008.
This scenario plays out one of the deepest psychic fears of the white American establishment: the slave uprising led by the Negro who white folks thought they could trust; the non-threatening one they could let run their White House while they went hunting. He could be the very same ungrateful Negro that would poison the food, or set the barn on fire while organizing the other slaves to steal and steal away. This is the nightmare Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had to have tossed and turned over at night on more than one occasion. Similar to the Spook in the movie, Obama has developed the skill of winning white votes playing the role of the non-threatening Black man America can trust. The Rev. Wright controversy has gone a long way in disproving that assumption. Fear of a 2008 Spook is what both Hillary Clinton and the Republicans tried unsuccessfully to exploit. The movie is intriguing because the hero was so determined, focused and smart that you were compelled to root for him. The daily injustices of life in isolated poverty in one of the richest countries in the world were rendered so clearly by Dixon's direction that Freeman’s vision seemed like a blue print to an ironic, apocalyptic justice.
There is a side of many black people that would look at any humbling of American power as divine retribution. Malcolm X described the type as a “field negro,”[2] one who would pray for a great wind to blow and catch the master's house on fire. It is that spiritual, age-old longing for justice that can only come from God humbling the powerful, coming to the aid of the afflicted through an Old Testament-style catastrophe aimed at the American pharaoh class. This is the spirit to which Rev. Wright, and any black preacher worth his black liberation salt, would preach. Without understanding that, it would be impossible to speak to the souls of black folk. This kind of black thought is what got Chicago native Black Panther Field Marshall Fred Hampton[3] assassinated, but it is also the foundation of the current African-American political class’s success at winning elections. It was the Black Panther Party that laid the ground work for Ron Dellums’s (first to Congress and, recently, to the mayor's office) election in Oakland in the 70s. And, without doubt, it is on the shoulders of that black thought and action that Barack Obama has stood.
Obama sat in Wright's pews because he needed to soak that game up; learn the skill of speaking to the choir and gathering a flock, with flair and audacity, while shouting truth to power and the people. Growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia could not have provided that crucial experience to the son of a white woman and an African student. Obama's speech on race[4] while meant to defuse the Wright controversy, actually catapulted Obama into the rare air of great American orators and suddenly placed the struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination in the historic quagmire of American racial politics. I was one of the early naysayers in the community that thought Obama was not black enough. Events have now taught me that, regardless of his intentions or feelings, he is as black as James Brown, by association, and owning up to that reality risked costing him the nomination; but, in classic jazz-like improvisation under duress and making something-from-nothing wizardry, it won him the presidency[5].
TESTIMONY TO POWER AND CAPTIVATION: OBAMA, TUPAC AND KENNEDY
I was living in New York. I can remember very clearly where I was when I learned that Tupac
Shakur[6] was dead. It was a pivotal and momentous event in and I will always be able to tell the
story of where I was when I heard the news. On Wednesday morning as Barack Obama
delivered his now famous address on race in America[7]I again knew that I was witnessing
something that I would remember for the rest of my life. I draw that parallel between two
radically different men (a convicted rapist and the former editor of the Harvard law review) to
highlight a startling truth: the two men have arguably captivated, intrigued and inspired young
and middle-age America more than any other person. The youths buying rap records now (or
downloading them on iTunes) were about six years old when Tupac was killed. They still wear
t-shirts with his picture on them and can quote his songs, but they only know him as a figure.
The mystery surrounding his death is not relevant because the only Tupac they know is a dead
icon, a hallowed saint of American rap history. That is the only way I ever knew President John
F. Kennedy. Mentioning Kennedy in this context brings us back to the enthusiasm shared b
y
millions over Barack Obama’s candidacy. America has never seen a politician like this. A man,
who intrigues and unites, speaks frankly and eloquently about race and inspires historically
apathetic young men and women to participate in the democratic process.
We have only heard stories about such men that came before. And we also know that all of them were shot and killed and had high schools named after them. Tupac’s legacy is in line with the Kennedy brothers (John and Robert) and Dr. King’s (if only in his ability to inspire and communicate). In fact, aside from the truth that Shakur and Obama are both attractive black men, the only common link is their extraordinary oratory. The young generation values an effective communicator because they grew up in the communication age. Tupac showed us that you can be a super communicator, rapper, actor, poet and, indeed, politician. This is a footnote from Tupac’s story that often goes overlooked. At the time of his murder, he was flirting with politics, speaking at voter registration drives in South Central Los Angeles[8]
To me, as a first step and in an American context, Obama personifies Kennedy and Tupac
in a way to consolidate several population segments, the established White, the popular African
American, as well as to bridge the generations as represented between Kennedy and Tupac,
exemplified by time, space and history. Obama is Tupac with his swagger of the streets, the
‘hood, a signifier of identity to African Americans. Yet, he is the legitimacy of white and
Establishment institutions having graduated from Ivy League, born of a white mother and
groomed, in the legal profession. And even in ways, unexpected, he may not be full blue blood,
but the breeding is there: reportedly cousins to Cheyney and Bush[9]. This is another way of
explaining Obama’s currency and ability to cross unexpected and choppy seas. This crossing
over is idealized by the Clinton’s complete shock of his winning states and surpassing Hilary’s
plan for herself. Obama’s international social capital, and following across groups and cultures, I
think is due to his mother living off the American mainland, their time in Indonesia, his African
father, all be his absence, gives Obama that intercultural dynamic that allows the Middle East,
Europe and Africa to accept him in all fame and glory, legitimacy to a hearing if not respect.
His international status and identity, brings in the global dimension where suddenly there are
websites ask, who would you choose for President[10] to where he is now considered the
defacto President of the world[11]. He is not just American and not just part African, of a
continent usually left out of most power politics. He is a cross cultural personality of major
appeal to all the peoples of the world, who can claim to that fame. I only ponder on the question
that end, outworking and purpose for a man of the darker hue to embody all these identities and
the hopes associated with all in the world.
The camaraderie that readily emerges among men, no matter their ethnicity, class, or social condition, would explain why in the 2008’s presidential campaign, the United States seemed more prepared for a Black male candidate than a white female, although both were relatively inexperienced in big-time politics. This observer’s hypothesis is that male trumps female every time, everywhere: “Barack’s a little looser,” said Bill Richardson, another Democratic Party candidate and former member of the cabinet of Bill Clinton, Hilary’s husband. Obama and Richardson developed a back-of-the-classroom rapport during the presidential debates, exchanging winks or eye rolls when one of the other candidates said something strange. “Come on, Bill, we’ll make history, man,” Obama told Richardson. The latter, then governor of New Mexico, responded: “Me, you and Teddy” (as in Kennedy, an ardent Obama supporter and big-time hero of Richardson’s). Note the call to an alliance, not so unnamed with the common association rhetoric of “man” at the end.
This theory is informed by a womanist[13] reading of patriarchal dynamics. If we were to hierarchy reality, patriarchy I think will be the last remaining bastion. It is at once the one all encompassing delineator and common denominator; the one all powerful influence over all other subsets of identity. Obama’s blackness was forgiven for his maleness; the fact that he was not of the threatening form of Black Maleness helped, the fact that he has passed through the White establishment gauntlet helped. And of course, his affable cool gives him rave kudos from all. He was not entirely an outsider interloping, if at all.
This theory of maleness trumping Hilary’s campaign is a framework of understanding that America was pushed to the edge of new territory in the 2007 Election. The choice was which carriage, between female and white, or male and black. America, a patriarchal society and structure of rules, laws, clubs, orders, and handshakes stood and maintained with as much of the old order as possible. In addition, males easily bond over sports, clubs, male privilege and beer[14]. This recent outcome and incident shows and proves the theory of male bonding, even in conflict, the ease at which it is attained, its readily available currency, if chosen to be employed. Despite all the rumblings against Obama in different camps over his months since being elected, for his programs and policies, shows how much of the old guard is represented in his approach…he bailed the banks out instead of the citizens, indicating a bend toward big money, big corporation and big establishment[15].
In the end, Bill Richardson showed his full understanding of the allure and meaning of the Obama candidacy to American citizens: “I feel a great deal of personal loyalty to the Clintons,” Richardson said several times in the televised interview, his face betraying the agony of indecision as much as fondness. He went on to describe Obama as “remarkable,” “someone I like very much,” and a leader “who is creating something that’s really good in this country”. These quotes thusly partially explain why Barack took over the candidacy and became the pied piper of the 2008 presidential race. One could call Hilary’s situation “the Audacity of Hopelessness,” to adapt the title of Obama’s second book and that of Rev. Wright’s sermon that he borrowed. Clinton’s fans did not see their standard-bearer’s troubles that way. In their view, their highly qualified candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat that got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve, young people who lap up messianic language as if it were “Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid.”[16] I, too, had thought of calling the media and society misogynist, but doubted myself; I felt I was being extremist, engaging in hyperbole. The journalist’s assertion makes me think again. I have no doubt that the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign was not a vaporous cult; it was a lean, mean, successful political machine. The Clinton camp was the slacker in the race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was self-immolating. Besides, the fact that she was anointed by one and all as front-runner did not help her focus on competing.
Hilary Clinton kept repeating her competence and experience and readiness to govern
from Day One. She might be right that Mr. Obama had a thin résumé, but her disorganized
campaign revealed and emphasized that the biggest item on her thicker résumé was the health-
care task force that she managed, an entity as botched as her presidential bid. As for countering
what she saw as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offered only a chilly void: Abandon hope
all ye who enter here. She must have been the first presidential candidate in history preaching so
much against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against
democracy itself! No sooner did Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittled its voters as
“unrepresentative of the country”. Her spouse and campaigner, ex-president Bill Clinton,
knocked states[17] that hold caucuses instead of primaries because “they disproportionately
favor upper-income voters” who “don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change.”
After the Potomac primary wipeout, Mark Penn, a Clinton associate and Hilary’s campaign
home state of Illinois. This might come as news to Virginia, Maryland, Washington and Iowa,
among the other so-called insignificant states of Obama victories. The blogger, Markos
OBAMA, JEREMIAH WRIGHT, AND THE OBAMA MACHINE
While Obama was able to rise above the faux pas of The Clinton machinery, he almost got caught by the Rev Wright debacle. Evidently, Rev Wright, Obama’s spiritual teacher, pastor and Chicago mentor, got into some conflict with his mentee; somehow, over something we observers are yet to know. Whatever the issue, it smoked and smoldered for a few weeks. What did surface was Wright’s apparent dissatisfaction with Obama’s middle of the road, non-race stance on national politics, perhaps[20]. Just when the issue and focus on Wright was about to go away, The Right Rev. Wright gave an appearance at the Washington D.C. Press Club[21] on April 30, 2008. The man was on fire. The man was angry[22]. He was, as they say in black language, bad. As the funny CNN show host, Jon Stewart, said, "He's got game; if my rabbi had game like that I would not have been eating cheese rolls on Passover." His performance was filled with African American signifying, coded language, eye-rolling and posturing[23]. He spoke various in-your-face-truths of the black man in America, raging against the experience of racism and bias on all levels of society; he was at war[24]. The media seized on Wright and Obama supporting him as this character of race baiter. Obama got pushed into a corner.
I was disappointed by Obama’s response. He said he was “outraged" and "insulted" by his former pastor's racial and anti-government rants - rhetoric he said he did not hear the pastor use in church[25]. When the media and his opponents came after him like cowboys chasing so-called Indians in the wild West, he would have pulled the same groove and master-stroke chess move as his erstwhile pastor, by declaring: “I am not a pastor; I am not a spiritual teacher; I am not directed to lead a people spiritually and in the context of their cultural history. I am seeking to lead the nation and, just as there is a division between church and state, I ought not to be accountable for what another man says, believes, or proposes. I am on my course, Jeremiah is on his. Yes, he may be my pastor and, yes, I may have to review how and when I encounter and engage him, but that is my and my family's personal decision, not a public one. Now, step off, and never ask me about Jeremiah Wright again; for, I will not respond! I have a campaign to run. I have a seat to seek. I have a vision to manifest; hopefully, the good people of this country will support my ideas and choose to participate in my project of nation-building.” This is what I wished I heard Obama say, he didn’t.
Instead, Obama bought the media’s assessment, story and responsibility of what someone says or does. It was not his culpability to claim. As if he is responsible for the views of a Pastor of a Church. He was forced to distance himself from Wright, and disassociate from the church that had given him roots and Chicago context. The loss of Wright appeared to be a gentleman’s agreement, albeit bumpy of collateral damage to Obama’s rise and success.
That, to my mind, would have firmly and absolutely confirmed Obama as the pied piper. Unfortunately, I felt that his veneer was failing. He appeared to be a paltry puppet politician responding and reacting to statements and accusations, based on what the public and, particularly his detractors, expected of him as opposed to holding up the ideal and the best for which he stood.
Fortunately, the candidate of the people redeemed himself and bounced back from the Wright side-show. His steady mien deceived many, not the least the dysfunctional press that Wright side-show. His steady mien deceived many, not the least the dysfunctional press that dubbed him, “No Drama Obama”, because of his personal cool. They were unaware that he was hatching an astonishing drama[26].
Barack Obama created, ran and maintained a novel campaign; one that blindsided his competition. It was a freight train storming through in broad daylight, not in the cold of night, or underground. The train carried common folk. Contrary to the well known tradition of American politics as not being really of the people, or for the people, Obama barnstormed, followed by the people. The community work that Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential pick, chided him for, served as spring board for Obama’s campaign. It was all about the old way, meeting people one by one, going from doorstep to block, and mobilizing the community for social change, just as in the days of the civil rights movement. Hardly did anyone imagine that such could be done on national scale. Of course, internet helped immensely, which was another facet of Obama’s qualities: he knew how to read the pulse of the nation, full of millions of young voters immersed in post-modern technology. The other candidates belonged to a long ago time, not to the present and certainly not to the future. Only Obama was able to communicate with a new public, a new voice, and a new stakeholder group. He could also bring on board the old, the disenchanted and lost souls banished from the political games of both right and left, post 9-11[27]. He used an advertizing campaign machine of unrivaled scale and complexity to out-advertise nationwide the Republic candidate, John McCain, by at least four to one[28]. Obama had the highest ever monthly donations in the history of American campaigns, some $180 million. His campaign became a “Popular Movement”. To the surprise of opposing forces, the man proved that he had substance beneath all that style and he used the election campaign as a president’s strategy for governance[29].
BARACK OBAMA AS SPIRITUAL MISSION
During the campaign there was the very real fear that Obama might be assassinated, owing to the country’s history of the tragic fate of famous and forward-looking activists and politicians[30]. Yet one felt that Obama had some spiritual protection, that he had a covenant to walk this road, and nothing could stop him. The road was mapped for him; he was created for this moment, this goal, this position, and he would fulfill the set purpose.
Obama seems to be on the mission of a higher being, more powerful than human means
and machinations, such as, the Clinton machinery, American racist power structure, religious
bias, and cultural jingoism. In this critic’s view, the only time something tragic can happen to
him is if he has security lapses, or, if his job is done. All in all, because of this, I hold him in high
esteem and firmly believe that he has a great deal to teach us all. He is blessed with the
unmovable temperament, stands tall, unblemished and consistent, unflappable, head down, quiet,
focused, writing important books before his national breakthrough, and never creating enemies
on his way up the ladder. It is truly remarkable for a black man who has lived an authentically
regular existence, with no silver spoons, from parent or patron, to help him cut corners, or escape
traps.
Barack Obama cannot be categorized; he remains outside of every imaginable box. Many people joke about him being a messiah and something special, but the way in which they engage the subject, the language they use, and the tenor of the conversation show that they still have no idea and lack the mystical and spiritual depth to grasp the Obama phenomenon. And one cannot but quote the internet data stating that, if the whole world could vote, 87.3% would elect Obama[31], thus paving the way for the first world president designation.
In the final analysis, here we have the 44th President of the most powerful nation in the world, a Black man, who is not just acceptable and unthreatening to the white establishment, but a Black man who still has street credibility and respect; a Black man with a Black wife from the Southside of Chicago; a black man admired by the world, and to whom even the enemies of America listen. It is to that Black Man, that Obamaman, that I dedicate the following poem.
One Great Glory[32]
Glory
Glory
Glory
The glory of air and simple gifts
A humbling of stature
The oneness of me to the other
The coming together of all, in time, through time
In a country, in which I lived and grew, it is of thee
And in the world, one magnanimity
One togetherness this day, for all sake
January 20, 2009 at 12:05 pm
The Inauguration of Barack “Like Me” Obama
A moment defining a new generation, a new page, a new chapter,
Of not national history but of world distinction
To see the descendant of the people who were slaves who built the White House,
Welcome one to the White House, as President:
Not as lesser or below anything or anyone, but as Head, Protector and Defender
Of the same constitution that once said one man Black was reviled, to be hung, chattel,
Of inconsequence and three fifths of…all others
Forth-three predecessors and more blood that can be contained
Unweighed sweat and tears of myriad ancestors of the natives to all us immigrants
IT is for this moment all who came before,
We have outlast all evil and darkness to emerge into this light
And all that tore, built, desecrated and supported was for…
This day, this age, this man, It is nothing less Glory
Nothing and no one was without purpose to bring us to this brink
This completion, this moment in time
To start anew, to carry on to create new roads, new journeys, new stories
For the old now ends in this completion; as embodied in this man
Consecrated Barack Obama
Come to repair every imaginable breach
And if one believes that is hyperbole, let them measure how many across the globe
Say that name in love and admiration
All who are doing the exact same thing at this very moment
Proclaiming a change in our international reality
From him, for us all: a new example; a getting to the other side
The time has come for noble ideas and greater personhood
Free from respective pains, tragedies and baggaged back story
We complete journeys to walk another, together
It is for the first time that I feel pride to have claim on America
Of its history as never before, its citizenship where prior it was private
So it is with accolades like these that we all look to begin again
For this time, it is the first time
That I watch an American inauguration and claim its experience as my own
It is for the first time I have engendered feelings and sympathy/empathy for the outgoing President; as well as the overwhelming silence of a new, one who looks “Like Me”
We emerge today as worms from cocoons, of bleak days, and death nights, to a kind of morning not yet defined, for there is no language, there is no formation, it has never before been. It is a new side, a new creation
Many have died to bring us to this day; This Day
Praisesong for the dead
Praisesong for the day
Praisesong for our all ancestors
Anything can be made, any sentence begun; of Love and Light, and walking thereof…
So I, in my solitude, space and own story, mark this turning
The connection of the personal to Obama to the global, and back again
Amidst all and any distance, that; and there is none too far for you
A Greater Power to Make a Way
It is the moment and lesson and promise of today;
A benediction for the next cycle of New Beginnings
As we watch the cycling back of time righting itself:
Washing over itself
And that is One Great Glory of a story
End Notes
[1] The Spook Who Sat by the Door, analysis, write-up, historical context http://ews.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d3a6a5118e6d9546958e666bdbd 3efdd)
[2] Field versus House Negro; historical slave reference, context, characterization, pejorative
From Malcolm X, in Selma Alabama speech, February 4, 1965
[3] Fred Hamptonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred Hampton
Barack Obama’s Famous Race Speech
[5] Kevin Weston http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d3a6a5118e6d9546958e666bdbd3efdd
[8] http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=18315e0da399d3c9dbb8ae6624b8874d
[9] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/25/barackobama1
[11] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/05/international.press.reaction/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ostertag/first-president-of-the-wo_b_142198.html
[12] February 2007, the showdown between Obama and Clinton for states, for the Presidential nomination; and my sense of a deciding factor of why America chose and Obama won over Hilary
13 Black woman’s voice, view, lens and empowerment; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womanism
[14] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aH3me8AdYAJc
[15] http://en.wordpress.com/tag/bank-bail-outs/
8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enTT317TT318&q=big+business+Obama
[16] Frank Rich, “The Audacity of Hopelessness” NYTimes.com 02-25-08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/opinion/24rich.html?_r=1&em&ex=1204088400&en=3e9996b4403c2%0b%20%20%20%20%2043c&ei=5087%0A
[17] knocked states http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/208/03/bill-clinton-un.html.
8&rlz=1T4GGLL_enTT317TT318&q=what+beef+did+wright+have+on+obama%3f
[21] http://npc.press.org/ ~ the world’s leading professional organization for journalists
[22] http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/interesting-article-on-obama-wright/
[25] http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-178449538.html
[26] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/opinion/31rich.html
[27] September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks in New York City World Trade Towers, Washington D. C. Defense
[29] NYTimes.com video story “The Obama Campaign Strategy, Updated” April 8, 2009 ‘Can the Campaign Apparatus Help the Sitting’
[30] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/06/mccain-does-nothing-as-cr_n_132366.html
[31] Website Page question to global citizens “Would you vote for?” If the world could vote, http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/results
[32] Author’s Original Poem
