Most people won’t read this whole article or will only hear a sound byte of what Rev. Wright says and then a whole bunch of negative attention will be brought onto the Obama campaign. I was not present for this sermon but I think spiritually this is a great message. To give honor to God and to know that he takes the ordinary and makes things extraordinary is a remarkable message. It speaks to me, I think it speaks to the obstacles that we must face in the road and it does a good job at showing how a man like Barack Obama can become who he is in this here country. Only God can create such magnificent wonders!

Now his comment about having a black woman sleeping at the White House “legally”, in my opinion his message could have done without it. While media pundits will not understand this comment I think it speaks to the idea, the history of white men in power lusting after women of color and having them be neither heard nor seen. This goes back to the times of slavery and I think he made this reference with that history in mind. However we all know the media can will misconstrue a statement like this because Rev. Wright allows them too.

HOUSTON, Texas — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, reappeared here Sunday.

Wrights spoke glowingly of Obama while preaching at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, as part of a message that God takes “the ordinary and turns it into the extraordinary.”

The former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, whose sermons created a political firestorm around Obama during the primary season, struck a conciliatory tone, as he talked about the Democratic nominee’s achievement in a riff that included references to the racial injustice that has been a part of America’s history.  

“Twenty years ago, a scrawny little kid with a pointed nose and big ears — mama from Kansas and daddy from Kenya,” he began. “An ordinary black boy raised in a single-parent home. The boy walked into my office 20 years ago to talk about his dream for a community that concentrated on things that we could achieve in common, things that united us rather than to focus on all the problems and the issues in the community about which we disagree or the things that divided us.”

Wright also spoke of the Rev. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks among other examples of God turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, before mentioning the Illinois senator and giving a short summary of his journey through Harvard Law School to the state Senate to the U.S. Senate to his position as the Democratic nominee.

“The Lord turned the ordinary into the extraordinary. Y’all just saw it this past week. It was on national television,” Wright said to applause. “This ordinary boy just might be, come November, the 4th, this ordinary boy from a single parent home with a daddy from Kenya and a mama from Kansas. This ordinary boy just might be the first president in the history of the United States to have a black woman sleeping at 1600 Pennsylvania, legally.”
 
Wright’s sometimes racially charged preaching was criticized as unpatriotic and divisive. Obama’s connection to the pastor became a political liability for him, as cable media, for weeks, repeatedly ran the most incendiary video clips of some of Wright’s sermons — seemingly on a loop.

Obama eventually denounced Wright, calling his message divisive and saying it ran counter to everything he had worked for in his career. He and his wife Michelle subsequently left Trinity in late May.

Wright has spoken at Wheeler, a black church in downtown Houston, many times over the years and has led revivals at the church.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XB_1o4JqyA&hl=en]

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme. - Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery - Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty. - Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Photo courtesy of New York Times

Wear all black on Monday for the injustice verdict in the Sean Bell case Please pass this on to anyone who can receive a text.

I received this text message numerous times throughout the course of the weekend and again I ask “Is wearing all black the new activism”. Has wearing all black taken the place of such notable activism as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I remember back when the Jena 6 movement was thriving and we were all wearing black as a means to show the masses our “black solidarity”. I participated and heard many say that they felt good walking into their corporate offices and seeing other people of color representing the injustice that was being served in Jena. But does our action stop there, does what we wear really signify that an injustice has been done?

So today I woke up and threw on my black shirt and my black Chuck Taylor sneakers in memory of the brother Sean Bell. I walked into my classroom and unlike that glorious Jena day, barely any people of color were wearing all black. What does wearing all black mean anyway; do the people who we want to see our solidarity even know that we are wearing this color to represent the fact that a brother was murdered by the NYPD. That yet again the NYPD walked out of a court of law not guilty of all charges. My own Constitutional Law professor had no idea who Sean Bell was and that this verdict had drastically affected the lives of many people. He was unaware that many young brothers and sisters had taken to the streets and were seeking Justice for the loss of yet another young talented black man. He definitely had no idea why one of his students had on black today; all he wanted to know was if I was familiar with the material that will be on his exam next week.

I checked through my usual news media outlets hoping that I would see something in the headlines about the injustice the Bell family was served this past Friday. Instead, I was inundated with news of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Democrat Primary’s, but there was no sign of any measures that would be taken towards the Bell family finding JUSTICE. And why should their be, a brother is dead and we all go back to our regularly scheduled lives. More concerned with celebrity gossip than the fact that black men can be killed in this country and their murderers receive absolutely no punishment.

The NY Times had a brief article about this issue however, and it largely dealt with the few people who were outraged by the verdict and were protesting in Harlem yesterday. One of the brothers on the bull horn asked “why aren’t more people out here”. The days of marching and blocking traffic for a day or two didn’t work then and they will continue not to work now. All the police do is re-direct the traffic and the protest becomes more of a nuisance than a movement that affects change. So what my generation has come up with as a means of fighting injustice is wearing all black; then we are really fighting institutionalized racism and brutality, we’ll show em!

Wrong, we need a strategic effort on a variety of fronts to fight the injustices that are facing our people. I refuse to believe that we are as lazy as the Civil Rights Guard of Leadership paints us. No we are not lazy at all, we are the internet generation; the text message generation. All of that to say we have the fastest and often most effective modes of communication to get messages across to our peers and move in a organized manner. We have to fight these different injustices on many different fronts. The Judge who rendered the verdict; we have to find out if he was elected or appointed; if elected we make sure that those who are eligible to vote in that district show up in record numbers to relieve him of his position.

Let’s take it back to the boycott days since the loss of revenue is the only thing that makes politicians and businessmen understand that we are angry about something and are seeking some type of remedy. This shouldn’t be hard to do because we are spawning into a recession anyway and people are already strapped for cash. We need to find out exactly what businesses that if we stopped patronizing would affect Michael Bloomberg the fastest. Once those major businesses are affected they will call up their high powered friends ad say “hey we have to do something about this’ its affecting my pocket”! You see when when we start to use our creativity and organize our efforts we begin to fall upon the ears who really create change in our cities. Maybe then the NYPD will stop believing that it is perfectly fine and legal to kill young black men. But if all we are doing is wearing black; trust me the courts, the politicians, the police and definitely the law are not hearing our voices.

We need to tap into the resources in our communities who have the know how and ability to propose legislation for stricter monitoring practices over the police departments who brutalize communities of color. All cops are not the scum who murder and harass people of color so we need to reach out to those who are fed up with their colleagues behavior and off the record find out what we can do to upset their internal situation that will help us make the changes we wish to see. I could write on for days about different measures that we could take however my one voice will not create this change. Our collective voice will not change these scenarios but our collective voices coupled with our strategic collective actions will create this change. In memory of Sean Bell and all of the other forgotten fallen soldiers; please let’s Make It Happen!

ps. I will be at the Black and Male In America Conference the weekend of June 15 - 17 in Brooklyn, NY. I think we all need to be there!

YES WE CAN! SI SE PUEDE!
My Vote’s for Obama (if I could vote) …by Michael Moore

April 21st, 2008

Friends,

I don’t get to vote for President this primary season. I live
in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.)
couldn’t get their act together, and thus our votes will not
be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will
you please cast my vote — and yours — on Tuesday for Senator
Barack Obama?

I haven’t spoken publicly ’til now as to who I would vote for,
primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most
people I know) don’t give a rat’s ass whose name is on the
ballot in November, as long as there’s a picture of JFK and
FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word
“Democratic” next to the candidate’s name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don’t care if the name
under the Big “D” is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It
can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Well, that sounded good last year, but over the past two
months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone
from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I
guess the debate last week was the final straw. I’ve watched
Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to
the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she
hurled the name “Farrakhan” out of nowhere, well that’s when
the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the “F”
word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama
has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator
Clinton, Obama’s pastor does — AND the “church bulletin” once
included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas!
No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained
the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if
Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the
Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth,
that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that’s how you sounded. Like you were
nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity.
How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you.
You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And
now to throw it all away for an office you can’t win unless
you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry
“Uncle (Tom)” and give it all to you.

But that can’t happen. You cast your die when you voted to
start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses
who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited
from entering the Promised Land.

How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman
elected to the White House. That day will come — but it won’t
be you. We’ll have to wait for the current Democratic governor
of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).

There are those who say Obama isn’t ready, or he’s voted wrong
on this or that. But that’s looking at the trees and not the
forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a
profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement
is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man.
But what’s going on is bigger than him at this point, and
that’s a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in
November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert
and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their
hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama
is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I know some of you will say, ‘Mike, what have the Democrats
done to deserve our vote?’ That’s a damn good question. In
November of ‘06, the country loudly sent a message that we
wanted the war to end. Yet the Democrats have done nothing. So
why should we be so eager to line up happily behind them?

I’ll tell you why. Because I can’t stand one more friggin’
minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible
damage it has done to our people and to this world. I’m almost
at the point where I don’t care if the Democrats don’t have a
backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little
heads. Just as long as their name ain’t “Bush” and the word
“Republican” is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that’s
good enough for me.

I, like the majority of Americans, have been pummeled
senseless for 8 long years. That’s why I will join millions of
citizens and stagger into the voting booth come November, like
a boxer in the 12th round, all bloodied and bruised with one
eye swollen shut, looking for the only thing that matters –
that big “D” on the ballot.

Don’t get me wrong. I lost my rose-colored glasses a long time
ago.

It’s foolish to see the Democrats as anything but a nicer
version of a party that exists to do the bidding of the
corporate elite in this country. Any endorsement of a Democrat
must be done with this acknowledgement and a hope that one day
we will have a party that’ll represent the people first, and
laws that allow that party an equal voice.

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have
seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev.
Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking
the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout
at the TV, “Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband
were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky,
who did she and Bill bring to the White House for ’spiritual
counseling?’ THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!”

But no, Obama won’t throw that at her. It wouldn’t be right.
It wouldn’t be decent. She’s been through enough hurt. And so
he remains silent and takes the mud she throws in his face.

That’s why the crowds who come to see him are so large. That’s
why he’ll take us down a more decent path. That’s why I would
vote for him if Michigan were allowed to have an election.

But the question I keep hearing is… ‘can he win? Can he win
in November?’ In the distance we hear the siren of the death
train called the Straight Talk Express. We know it’s possible
to hear the words “President McCain” on January 20th. We know
there are still many Americans who will never vote for a black
man. Hillary knows it, too. She’s counting on it.

Pennsylvania, the state that gave birth to this great country,
has a chance to set things right. It has not had a moment to
shine like this since 1787 when our Constitution was written
there. In that Constitution, they wrote that a black man or
woman was only “three fifths” human. On Tuesday, the good
people of Pennsylvania have a chance for redemption.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com
MMFlint@aol.com

You want to repackage Dr. King, make him some quiet loving guy with an Olive Branch in his hand, no, that was not Dr. King. I knew Dr. King, he spoke out against the injustices of America, and that’s why he died, because THEY decided that he had to be killed.- Fathe Pfleger

Over the past few weeks we have been bombarded with media distortments of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and his statements made during his tenure as Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. Questions of race, which deeply divide this country though many of us would like to believe that it doesn’t have been wedged into our news coverage of this historical moment in our country. Of course I am speaking of the fact that the two front-runners for the Democrat Presidential nomination are a black man and white woman; two unequivocal minorities.

Why is it that a black Pastor who has no formal role in our Political process has received so much coverage based around his comments? Yet, Patrick J. Buchanan, a well know Republican, columnist, and at 3 different points in his career sought the nomination to be Commander in Chief of the United States of America can make divisive comments centered around race. Comments that are quite insulting and there is no uproar in the media, there is no condemnation of his language. Could this be the type of oppression that Jeremiah Wright was speaking about, the interesting way in which our media sets the agenda for what we think and how we think about it. Is it ok to think about racism when it negatively depicts a black minister, but when this privileged man; whom to many represents the views of our government invokes incendiary language about the history and culture of a people we turn a blind eye to it?

Barack Obama was right; we do need to have a serious conversation about race in this country if we ever plan to move forward. Slavery ended in the 1800’s, however the oppression black people face still exists today. This is not an issue against white people; white people are not the government, white people are not the institutions that impose on the civil liberties of minorities. I think that a genuine conversation about race and oppression in this country will show both sides this point. Until we open up this dialogue and speak about these topics responsibly we can expect eloquent comments like the one you will read below from privileged, white men, who run this country.

“America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.”

“[N]o people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.” - Patrick J. Buchanan

To read more just click the link below.
http://www.buchanan.org/blog/

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrp-v2tHaDo&hl=en]