On Obama-mania

Ezili Danto's Note:

Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008, Louisiana, Washington and Nebraska went to the polls and Senator Barack Obama received more than 50% of the votes in all three states, plus the Virgin Islands. He received 57% of the votes in Louisiana, 68% in both Washington and Nebraska, taking 92 delegates (3 from the Virgin Islands). According to one report, before the Maine victory, Senator Obama held 1,049 delegates (918 pledged and 131 super delegates). He needs a total of 2,025 to win the nomination. Today, he just won Maine by wide margins and more delegates <a href="(1144 after Maine)">http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_delegate_count.html And, pundits are predicting he will sweep Tuesday's (Feb. 12, 2008) primaries in Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland, as well as next week in Wisconsin and his native Hawaii.

"Clinton is hoping to prevail on March 4 when Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont vote." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080210/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_campaign_manager ).

With our experience in Haiti and even looking at political and civil rights history in the U.S. since the 1960s social revolution and in this Hemisphere in general, this whole Obama-mania thing is unnerving. In Haiti, leaders like Daniel Fignole, for instance, help propel revolutions for the common man's rights/interests, and not for the rich who wouldn't deign to pay taxes are be subject to the laws of the land. When such leaders speak, like Obama, for the people and by some miracle are elected, what we've seen - i.e. after Fignole, Aristide, et al - are years, decades, of reactionary politics as Empire and the super-rich strike back with a vengeance. That's why the most cautionary comment, I've read so far on the Obama-mania phenomenon, comes from a Latino activist, voting for Clinton, who wrote that "In Latin America... when people speak like Obama after many years of reactionary politics, a message of change to the Left means more turmoil and conflict, not stability."

A Black face to empire may only bring symbolic changes, but even this inroad, we fear, shall be too much for Officialdom. So, be prepared, if Obama actually wins the election, be prepared, my people, for their vengeance on those at the bottom rungs that will come. It will be ugly. Haitians, African-Americans, Latino Americans and Native Americans, et al, know this well. But, though it's scary as hell and, after two coup d'etats in Haiti (1991 and 2004), total immigration oppression/tyranny against Haitians since 1996, the Civil Rights reversals beginning since the Bakke case and Thurgood Marshall was replaced by Clarence Thomas, and the reactionary reigns of Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush, again, and war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Coup d'etat in the Ivory Coast, genocide in Rwanda (in the 1990s that everyone is saying was "the good old Clinton days in the U.S."), I can't imagine mustering up more fight. But, I suppose we must find the strength.

What we know cannot ever deter our struggle, from one generation to the next, towards economic democracy and a better and more just world for all.

Marguerite "Ezili Dantò" Laurent, Esq.
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN")
Feb. 10, 2008
ezilidanto.com


Related Article:
Vote for Barack Obama - Ezili's HLLN endorses Barack Obama
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/Jan1_08.html#obama