Why Obama Can’t Win

[I WRITE WHAT I LIKE]

The venue that a presidential candidate chooses to announce his or her candidacy is very telling. Ronald Reagan chose Philadelphia, MS. This was the burial site for three civil rights workers slain by the Ku Klux Klan and their partners in crime, law enforcement officials.

Senator Barack Obama apparently chose Springfield, IL to announce his presidential candidacy out of deference for President Abraham Lincoln who, he might believe, actually freed enslaved Africans. This venue is probably symbolic of his political message and his positive attitude about Lincoln.

Blacks must be clear about Lincoln. Contrary to popular myth, Lincoln never freed enslaved Africans. The Emancipation Proclamation was null and void ab initio. Africans had to emancipate themselves. We are still pursuing freedom. Thousands have lost their lives or have been imprisoned.

Lincoln campaigned in 1860 to continue slavery. After he was given the keys to the White House, he advocated colonization. When it appeared that the Union was about to lose the Civil War, he fraudulently authored the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a war measure.

Lincoln also authored a constitutional amendment that would expressly support the enslavement of Africans after his presidency. Illinois ratified it and it would become law after three-fourths of the states were given the opportunity to ratify it. Compare the history of ratification of the Twenty-seventh Amendment from 1789 to 1992.

Even without a constitutional amendment to sanction the outright enslavement of Africans, there are more enslaved Africans in the United States today than there were at the outbreak of the Civil War. This was the intent of the Thirteenth Amendment.

There were four million enslaved Africans in 1860. Today, there are more than five million enslaved Africans in the United States. These Africans have no right of privacy, no right of self-defense, no right to bargain and no right to vote or to enjoy jury service while white felons are, routinely, given a second chance.

We have no Black agenda to make demands on the government for a simple matter like a “Curriculum of Inclusion” to stop the miseducation of our people. The New York City Board of Education intends to build a public school for Arabic studies despite the absence of a single Arab in public office.

Frederick Douglass refused to endorse Lincoln in 1860. If Douglass were alive today, I doubt if he would support any of the Democratic or Republican candidates, including Sen. Hillary Clinton. Douglass refused to embrace charismatic personalities. Instead, he embraced progressive policies.

We must keep our eyes on the prize and the ultimate prize is matching a presidential candidate with a Black agenda. Amassing power, however, is like building a house. It must start at the bottom and connect to the ceiling. In politics, the presidency is the ceiling but it rests on local politics. All politics is local.

While Blacks in New York City, for example, have no shot at, outright, controlling the White House, we should already be in control of Gracie Mansion. It is our time to run this city but leading Blacks have steered the Black lumpen proletariat into a morontocracy.

We constitute the largest voting bloc in the city, but the mayor and the City Council speaker are white although whites constitute only one-third of the city’s population. If 2.5 million Blacks in New York City are unable to control City Hall, the White House is a pipe dream.

The most important judicial institution in New York City is the family court, which is systematically breaking up Black families and warehousing Black babies with great profits for white businesses. This is reminiscent of slavery and constitutes a badge of slavery.

Out of 77 family court judges in New York City, only four are Black in a city of 2.5 million Blacks. No leading Black nor Black selected official will challenge Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg or Chief Judge Judith Kaye over the maintenance of a judicial system “infested with racism” as documented by a blue ribbon commission in 1991.

Let’s talk about Senator Obama after the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008. In the meantime, we should study the presidential candidacy of Dick Gregory, who was the first Black person ever to run for president of the United States. It was a write-in campaign. He avoided white primaries.

Gregory embarked on a presidential campaign in 1968 with his book “Write Me In!” outlining his political vision. His presidential candidacy has shown that Blacks hold the “balance of power” in presidential politics. See also the 1960 presidential election.

New Jersey would have gone into the Democratic column except for Gregory’s candidacy. His presence, in November 1968, as a write-in-candidate led to the defeat of Hubert Humphrey. Nonetheless, Gregory made his point. The Black vote can make a difference.

Instead of using the Gregory paradigm to extract real political benefits and contracts from mainstream political parties, political hustlers entered the political fray to personally enrich themselves while supervising voter registration campaigns for the Democratic Party. This is like ushering enslaved Africans out of the slave quarters and into the cotton fields.

Obama joins the ranks of Cong. Shirley Chisholm, Rev. Jesse Jackson, former Sen. Carol Moseley and Rev. Al Sharpton, who sought permission from the political establishment to receive the presidential nomination for the general election. They all failed. The white primary system and the Electoral College are designed to weed out Blacks, including Obama.

In November 2008, Obama will not be on the ballot as a presidential candidate. Ultimately, whites will keep the spirit of their “founding fathers” alive. See the 2006 U.S. Senate campaign of Harold Ford, Jr. and the 1990 U.S. Senate campaign of Harvey Gantt.

This country is moving towards redressing the grievances of white women who were enfranchised under the Nineteenth Amendment while Black men were enfranchised under the Fifteenth Amendment. Look at their numbers in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This bodes well for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

Obama’s run for the presidency is important to the Democratic Party. Blacks hold the “balance of power” in presidential politics. With Obama’s entry into the presidential sweepstakes, Blacks are expected to throw their votes, mindlessly, at the Democratic Party without a demand for consideration. This will benefit Hillary Clinton and it is plantation politics at its worst.

This protracted struggle for effective legal representation is necessary in the spirit of Robert Morris, Sr., Frederick L. McGhee, Scipio Africanus Jones and Charles Hamilton Houston.

Any expression of support should be sent to UAM Legal Defense Fund, c/o Alton H. Maddox, Jr., 16 Court Street, Ste. 1901, Brooklyn, NY 11241. Freedom is not free and all struggles must be financed. My pro bono representations advanced the struggle. Asante sana.

To subscribe to or advertise in New York’s leading Pan African weekly investigative newspaper, please call (212) 481-7745 or send a note to Milton@blackstarnews.com

“Speaking Truth To Empower.”