(c) Photo property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
Tha Artivist Reports...A W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News Special...
Obama! Obama! Obama! (c) Photos property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
I was there…We were there (Tha Artivist/Artstorian with his mom, sister & brother)…I testify…We testify…Seeing Barack Hussein Obama become the 44th President of the United States was well worth the 14 hour trip driving a rent a car from Memphis to D.C., the hundreds of dollars in gas, several hundreds more in hotel lodgings and the couple of hundred for dinner and snacks, not to mention the souvenirs (please don’t mention the souvenirs!!!)…
We Are Family!!! (c) Photos property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
It can be said that Obama’s historic inauguration was a major stimulus package for the economy…I have no doubt that many people made a good year’s salary on inaugural day alone…Did I mention the freezing cold and the long lines???
(c) Photos property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
I tell you something else there was more than 5 million people…Just ask McDonald’s…McDonald’s made more money off of Black folks that inaugural weekend than any other time in history…Obama’s Inauguration was the best commercial advertisement they could have every invested in…Inauguration Day Was Really Initiation Day
It's About Time!!!(c) Photos property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
Trust me when I say again there was more than 5 million people…I was bouncing off people like a ping pong ball in the metro and I am not a fella so easily moved…I thought I was going to drown in a sea of people, a poor man’s version of the great Poseidon Adventure…It was so packed that when a boy had a heart attack at the McDonald’s that Inaugural Day Tuesday afternoon, it took an emergency response team a matter of minutes and not moments to break through the massively thick crowd of Obamaphiles to get to the child…Ironically this McDonald’s was located next to the State Department and FEMA Building (Yes that FEMA)…This time FEMA did do the right thing and let Black folks catch their breath and eat their quarter pounders with cheese and Big Mac combos with apple pies inside their front corridor...Where was this hospitality over 3 years ago for the good folks of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans???
Metro Madness!!! (c) Photos property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
I know u got my Metro tix right sis??? (c) Photo property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
They say there were 30,000 cops in the vicinity...My question is where was the cops when the Metro was shut down for hours after the inauguration and the crowds were growing and multiplying like roaches and cars and buses were seemingly jammed in every street and crevice of the Capitol City??? For a crowd I must say that the people did behave (people act like when large groups of Black folks get together that we get rowdy, counterproductive and destructive…But let me ask you this when did Black folks every acted out in terms of rioting when there wasn’t a good reason to do so??? America if we are truly to become a post-racial entity then we must face the collective demons of the past and slay them with our better angels of love and reconciliation for future’s sake)…By the way if there were incidents they weren’t reported…Like I said before there were enough cops (30,000) to cause multiple Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Adolph Grimes and Jena 6 incidents that would keep Rev. Al Sharpton busy for the next 2 Presidential administrations alone…
Johnny Law Horsing Around. (c) Photo property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
Catching the Flatfoots flatfooted. (c) Photo property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
While in the midst of finding safe passage to VA we had a Forrest Gump moment…The street I was driving on suddenly had its traffic halted to make way for a huge entourage of suvs, limousines and ambulances….When we saw the crowd on the streets react in a very positive and cheerful manner we all realized that it was Pres. Elect Barack Obama’s entourage cutting its way through the D.C. traffic like a hot searing butter knife…
After getting lost several times and going around in circles and on one way streets we finally figure D.C. out (It figures this city was designed by an angry Black man, so passive aggressive!!!)…If you want to get out and through D.C. just take 14th Street and everything else will fall in place. D.C. streets are interesting...Most of the streets are either named after states, the letters of the alphabet or numbers...
BHO & MLK
"Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." ~Dr. Martin Luther King
It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today. ~Pres. Barack Hussein Obama
For whatever people got to say about Barack Hussein Obama, one thing he has gotten right is reclaiming MLK back for ‘The People’ from the manipulation of the corporate mass media death machine…MLK ‘s message has been muted far too long by the powers that be for obvious reasons…King’s life was about service to others and not glory to self…MLK was about providing a voice to the voiceless and giving hope to the hopeless…MLK was a community organizer who knew the value of the individual as well as the power of the collective…With that said BHO did a truly masterful thing when he re-dedicated MLK Day as a day of service for the nation. As a matter of fact BHO directly asked for something from the American people that his predecessor failed or didn’t want to do: sacrifice for the collective good of the nation so that we may move forward together in a shared destiny and a more perfect union…It felt good to see BHO acknowledge the awesome and complex legacy of MLK…He actually breathe new light into his legacy by making it a living mechanism in the minds, hearts, actions and spirits of the people and not the overstuff, ‘over embalmed’ museum trophy piece oddity and spectacle that it had been in recent years…
However, this is what I didn’t like and this was of course was out of BHO’s hands…The corporate media said that King’s Dream was achieved with the coronation of 44th President elect Barack Hussein Obama…I hate to break it to the white guilt tripped corporate media press or should I say mess that BHO’s magnificent achievement wasn’t the true focus of MLK’s dream…
As a matter of fact MLK stated magnificently and specifically in his beautifully last but often understudied and grossly misinterpreted speech that we as a people shall get to the promised land…If you look around D.C. beyond all the glitz and glamour of the inauguration you can see the hood...If you continue down 495 North you will hit Baltimore a.k.a. Tubman City whose inner city schools boasts a 34% graduation rate…If you go further up north you will hit NYC where over half of the Black males of eligible age are under and unemployed…So the question remains have we as a people arrived???
Dr. King spoke of Black folks controlling our economic destiny in his last speech at Mason Temple in Memphis…He stated that if Black folks’ consumer/buying power in the states was combined that it would represent the 10th largest economy/nation in the world...He urged Black folks to patronize Black owned businesses such as insurance and banking institutions…He told them to boycott corporate entities such as Wonder Bread, Hart’s Bread, Sealtest Milk and Coca Cola who would gladly take your Black dollars but won’t give you good jobs at their companies…
In Memphis where MLK’s life was taken, the sanitation workers he came and ended up dying for still don’t have the benefits that initiated his prophetic presence and fated conclusion…As a matter of fact although Memphis is a chocolate city the revenue generated from Black owned businesses represent less than 1 percent of the annual city revenue…The same corporate entities that MLK warned Black folks about are basically controlling and holding the city of Memphis stage as Robber Barons providing jobs on the plantation as well as being deftly apt at using divide and conquer techniques among the maladjusted masses via the usage of Black faced puppet leadership...
Ironically, it is those same corporate entities that now control the main narration of the civil rights struggle…They have put their talons and cinched their teeth into the sacred spot of where King was slain and turn it into a corporate cash cow leaving the folks whose blood, sweat and tears made the movement and “The Dream” a reality all out in the cold looking for handouts and a way out…So did we as MLK stated so profoundly over 40 years ago integrate into a burning house???
People must remember the wounds of slavery has not been properly healed since slavery, the flesh is still raw…You had American Civil War vets living into the 1950s as well as former slaves providing firsthand accounts to the U.S. Library of Congress and other interested institutions in the middle of the 20th Century…The last former slave, Charlie Smith of Barstow, Florida died in 1979…This country’s economic infrastructure was built on genocide and slavery…Slaves built Wall St. and were traded like commodities in its markets….Some of the Wall St. companies our government is trying to bailout were at first bailed out by the bondage and enslavement of Africans and their free labor several recent generations ago…Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Booker T. Washington all former slaves and distinguished and accomplished American citizens have not been dead for 100 years yet…
So how can we as a nation of immigrants and the descendants of slaves say that we as a people have truly arrived???
We can’t and we shouldn’t…Yet…
From what I can see the mountaintop isn’t all that crowded, but the valleys are full indeed…
On the other hand with that said I am well assured that the main objectives of “The Movement” was not to get a Black man elected President as the corporate media mafia would want you to believe but rather to insure that everyone’s human and civil rights were respected and protected by the laws of our land…Having a Black President was probably something of an afterthought if truly or seriously considered at all during MLK’s time…What people should want all the time is fair and just leadership and laws regardless of the color or gender of the person in charge of administering and creating the laws and policies…
However, MLK would also say perhaps that all America did was use a pretty brown face as the face of the empire and called it progress…He would surely just as he did the civil rights and great society minded presidency of LBJ demand that BHO spend more money in saving lives rather than destroying them through the guise of the military industry complex…Over a billion people worldwide are living on less than a dollar a day…
America has some of the highest infant mortality rates in the world…The United States have about 25% of the world’s prison population and many of these prisoners are nonviolent offenders who are destitute…Our societal infrastructure is still dying a slow spiritual death…
Victories gained 40 years ago are nothing but a distant memory…I recently spoke to a colleague who does business in Selma, Alabama…He told me of how depressed, repressed, and oppressed the Black folks of Selma were…He said that the town along with the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge, scene of one of the most dramatic and decisive moments in American Civil Rights Movement history, was in badly need of repair…When he asked some of the Black residents why the town was in such bad shape, they replied because “White folks got all the money”…This is 43 years later after that “victory” which lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965…
Once again I reiterate “have we as a people made it to the Promised Land???"
A Cost To Consider For ‘The Moment’
Ancestor Kathryn Perry Thomas
(1915-2008)
She finally got to her teaching career and told me of the joy she had of teaching her alma mater, Manassas High School, during the 40s and 50s…She said her school produced some of the best and the brightest in the country...Many of these kids continued their education at some of the best colleges in the nation…It was nothing for these kids to go to schools such as Spelman, Morehouse , Howard, Harvard, Stanford and Yale…But she believed until her dying day that the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board ruling killed not Jim Crow but the strong close knit African American community...This ruling she felt was truly a one way street…How were they going to take the best of the best a.k.a. the talented tenth out of their supportive and nurturing communities and bused them to an alien environment where they were made to truly feel unwelcomed and inferior??? Some of the best African American teachers lost their jobs because many of the pre-dominantly White schools wouldn’t dare hire Black teachers to teach Black and white students...
To see schools like her alma mater go from graduating Rhodes Scholar type students to students who can barely read and spell their own name was something that truly perturbed and disturbed her. To see schools transform from being a proud institution of learning and empowerment to virtually being a daycare facility to accommodate teenage moms and a rudderless student population also troubled her. At the end of our substantive several hour conversation she stated that she felt so heartbroken to see us as a people go backwards rather than forward…
However, going back to last week’s festivities I must say I was thoroughly moved by the presence of so many elders, many of whom never thought they will see the day a Black man was elected President...Even when the crowds seemed to be very claustrophobic and closing in on me I saw or witnessed several elders braving the element in their finest with their walking chairs, wheelchairs and strollers many of whom should be bedridden but were determined as in the words of one elder to make sure that it was real and wasn’t a dream or trick…It was truly surreal to see these elders as cool as ice as if in the eye of the hurricane, so small in stature and yet so powerful in presence, not allowing the buzzing hustle and bustle of the crowd around them to interfere with their shared moment of clarity…It moved me not only emotionally but to the actualization that progress has been made in spite of the justifiable cynicism and all the setbacks …We have came a long way, but we still got a long way to go…
The Case Of The Worthless Press Pass…
Getting So Credentialized... (c) Photos property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
After that beautiful exchange and interaction it all went downhill from there…I knew I had bad vibes in the early morning hours of inaug day about the effectiveness of my particular press pass…I looked at it trying to analyze and re-analyze all that was written on the front, to see if I could decipher any double meaning to the words and phrases…To me it just sounded too good to be true…The powers that be would let a homegrown mom and pop internet news operation such as W.E. A.L.L. B.E. in only our third year get so close to the swearing of President elect Obama??? I was getting chills thinking I will actually see his breath articulating the dawn of a new era in American Life…Later on that day I found out it was all a dream…
First of all the PIC folks (Presidential Inauguration Committee) did not provide certain members of the press with any information on the location to meet and set up shop…The only press that seem to have access to the inaugural action were those known and welcomed by the Senate Gallery(Washington Post and C-Span for example) as well as those Cable News outlets (MSNBC, CNN and Fox)…They were allowed to set up in the Rayburn building right next to the Capitol…Every other press organization it seems didn’t matter in the equation...
I even called the point person for the press (it was by no means an easy feat considering that were millions of people in close proximity using their phones and texting folks) and he told me that press with swearing in national mall credentials should go to the 15 St entrance to gain access…This was truly absurd considering that that would put me far away from the action happening on The Hill…I refuse to accept his command and so I mutinied to sort of speak…I did not come hundreds of miles driving 14 plus hours from Memphis, Tn to be hoodwinked into the third class section of witnessing history in the making, no offense…
I eventually ran into a photographer from New York who was having the same problems as I was…Nobody it seems including the designated info people with red hats could tell us where we was suppose to be…Even the secret service and the police didn’t have a clue (and they were the people handling logistics and security!!!)…As we went around lost like George W. Bush in a Spelling Bee we ended up meeting other press comrades who were literally and metaphorically left out in the cold as well…
However the mishap proved to be a golden opportunity for me because I was able to meet one of the main editors at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Mr. Otis Sandford who was also chaperoning his young daughter around for the day’s festivities…He was a very affable and patient guy who I look forward to working with in the near future…Eventually a reasonable police officer allowed us ‘the renegade guerilla media’ access to the 7th street entrance…We were right in front of where MSNBC was broadcasting and plus there were wiggle room to move around unlike 15 street where it looked like the scene from the movie Titanic where all the poor people were squeezed and locked into the bottom deck cellar awaiting a doom they couldn’t avert…
‘The Moment’ Was Priceless
Catching A Glimpse Of The Moment From The Treetops (c) Photos property of W.E. A.L.L. B.E.
In spite of all the hassles, the cold, occasionally stepping in police horse doody and the overpriced food (I paid 3.75 for a ballpark frank and 2.75 for a 20 oz Sprite), I can honestly say that it was all worth it to witness that priceless moment of the swearing in of our nation’s First recognizably Black President…People were fighting squirrels for positions in trees, stood on top of filthy port a potties and garbage dumpsters to witness the defining act of the dawning of a new America…And let me said Pres. Obama did not disappoint…Pres. Obama better than most ‘overstands’ the power of moments like this…When he sees an opportunity opening up, just like a great running back he runs through it and gains the most yardage possible…
With that said Pres. Obama had the audacity to bring the real Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin before the world to serenade us…Got the memo now Beyonce??? People forget or don’t know that Dr. King’s first gave his famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech at Aretha’s father’s (Rev. C.L. Franklin a.k.a. The Million Dollar Voice) church, New Bethel Baptist Church, in Detroit…Without a doubt Obama knew…With her angelic voice and so fresh and so clean true Black Baptist woman hat she did The People proud!!!
“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.”
The crowd’s response was one of pure joy and elation...Even those who were not familiar with Dr. Lowery’s unique contributions to the cause felt empowered by the sincerity and inclusiveness of his words...What other Presidential Inaug you can think of that had such a wide and diverse range of voices representing the true makeup of our nation as the one helmed by the first recognizably Black President Barack Hussein Obama??? This celebration had something for the evangelicals and the radicals and everyone else in between indeed...
Side note it was interesting to see the 2nd loudest cheers in my opinion were not for the Clintons or Pres. Carter but for Al Gore...It was a thunderous ovation to me that represented the buyer’s remorse of the last 8 years...What if Gore did the Al Franken method??? Would there have been a need for Barack Hussein Obama??? That question is indeed above my pay grade...
Also it was amazing to hear people’s response to the program segment where it was Obama's time to shine…You had to be there in person because television and the internet doesn’t do it justice…Flags were flapping and waving with such vigor…Voice decibels were off the charts…Pres. Obama’s speech did not disappoint…It had a little something for everyone...Obama is truly the Barnhill’s or Ryan’s Steakhouse of American politics, he has something that appeals to everyone’s appetite regardless of how picky or particular their ideology taste palate…
VIDEO:President Barack Obama 2009 Inauguration And Address
Obama’s speech had echoes of Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt that is…He ushered in a new speak softly but carry a big stick foreign diplomacy era in regards to the Muslim World for the 21st century…His administration is willing to "extend a hand" to the Muslim World and others if they are equally as willing to "unclench their fists"…It is great to see and hear a President who is thoughtful, thinks before he speaks and speaks in complete sentences with subject verb agreement…
Barack Hussein Obama is a man who has inherited a mess of a situation…It will be up to not only him, but to all of us to chip in and do our parts….You can’t have ownership of anything if you don’t invest in the survival of what you possess…
This is our time to reclaim as well as renew America for the people and to show the world once again why America has always been thought of as the land of opportunity and hope in spite of her shady character and checkered past...This country is famous for reinventing its image and national narrative…With that said now’s the time for us to dress up for rehearsal, learn our parts and participate in this play of plays…See you all on the set!!!
Yes We Can!!!
W.E. A.L.L. B.E. Artists: Sis. Rachel Crouch:
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2009/01/check-out-first-installment-of-we-all.html
W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special:Reflections On The 2009 Inauguration Part One:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2009/01/23/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2009/01/23/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio
W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Yes He Did...So Now What??? Defining The Obama Presidency...
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/11/16/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/11/16/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio
W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special:O Yes We Did!!! The Barack Obama Tribute...
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/11/09/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio
W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Barack Obama & The Hip Hop Effect On American Politics:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/02/10/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/11/09/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-News-Radio
W.E. A.L.L. B.E. News & Radio Special: Barack Obama & The Hip Hop Effect On American Politics:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2008/02/10/Tha-Artivist-PresentsWE-ALL-BE-Radio
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Get The Barack Obama Holiday Inaugural Gift Package By R2C2H2 Tha Artivist!!!
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