By Gloria Dulan-Wilson
I recently received an email from my friend, Jitu Weusi in reference to the proposed closing of Paul Robeson School in Brooklyn (see below), and I thought, now this has gone absolutely too far. The hits just keep on coming in terms of the assaults on the Black community.
With each day there is a new way to try to drive Blacks out of Brooklyn. To gentrify the communities we live in. To push people to the point that it’s no longer a desirable place for us to live, while our communities are supplanted by more “palatable” ethnicities (did I put that correctly?).
And while everyone blames Bloomberg, I think the issue is even more organic than some miscreant who has usurped the mayoralty for a third term. I think the heart of the matter really lies with us - we Black folks - who appear to be content to mutter and complain, and put together weak demonstrations (not you, JiTu).
Those of us who sat on our behinds during an election that was ours to lose, and allowed him to sneak back in for four more years of even more insult to injury, are now finding themselves in the crosshairs of his gunsite. He is proceeding unabated in his efforts to dismantle the Black community, and to make Brooklyn the “new Manhattan.” Some part of the culpability of the desecration and the denigration of the Black community must also be attributed to Borough President Marty Markowitz, who does not seem to be looking out for the best interest of the constituents, either. These schools are in the communities over which he has some jurisdiction; yet there is silence from Borough Hall.
By the way, before I go any further, just want to know if anyone has noticed the synchronicity and timing of this whole thing? We have the debacle at Medgar Evers, with a perpetrator in the role of president who clearly means neither the university or the community any good. And while we’re fighting that battle, we now have to close ranks on Paul Robeson School.
But, at the risk of pissing everybody off, I am going to say that the real culprits are we ourselves - we the Black/Caribbean/African/African American/Afro Latino residents of Brooklyn - who make up 85% of the population, but get pushed around as though we are less than 10%.
While I wholeheartedly support Brother Jitu Weusi, I had to wonder just how many really know who Paul Robeson was, and what his significance is for us as Black people? How many of us know who Paul Robeson is? Apart from those of my generation and older, how many have had the pleasure of watching one of Paul Robeson’s classic movies, such as “The Emperor Jones,” or “Sanders of the River,” (which was the original move about King Solomon’s Mines).
How many have ever heard this wonderful man’s bass-baritone mellifluous voice, or viewed perhaps one of the handsomest Black men ever to walk the planet? How many know what a real honor it is to have a school named after such a man?
I personally have always called Brother Paul Robeson F.I.N.E. = Focused, Intelligent, Natural, Elegant - he was an all round athlete, actor, activist - he got a law degree in 1923 from Columbia Law School, in a day and age when Black men weren’t even allowed to “practice” law. He was an all around athlete and intellectual. He came from a family of intellectuals - father a minister who graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (my alma mater!!); mother a member of intellectuals from Philadelphia. He was raised in Princeton, NJ., graduated from Rutgers. He was what was called a credit to his race - meaning us Black folks - and indeed Robeson did us proud.
He was so positive and powerful that he was allowed to make movies on themes that were outside the bounds of Jim crow racism - in London, of course - you know they’d never allow him to do that here back in the day of lynchings and castrations. Robeson was a hero - and he was and is a personal hero of mine and my family. I just watched a DVD of “The Emperor Jones,” a movie I will never tire of, and watched as took us through a complete range of emotions. The brother was a fantastic actor. To this day there have been few who have come close to his talents.
That a school was named in honor of Paul Robeson shows there was a consciousness in the community of providing the students with an individual, a role model they could look up to.
What has happened to cause this to no longer be the case? Well it certainly can’t be the students. It has to be a combination of the administration, faculty, staff - but more importantly, it has to be because the parents have allowed the school to slide into a low level of standards.
If you have a high standard for your child, there is no way that you are going to allow the teachers to do less than the best. If they are now trying to close the doors of Paul Robeson, our parents have to look at what it is they have or have not been doing that has allowed this to happen. Then we have to turn it around and at the same time take a stand, draw line in the sand, and let Bloomie and his henchmen know that we are not going to close the school, but we are going to demand a regime change in terms of the faculty and staff. That we are going to set the standards. We are going to make sure they are implemented.
In addition to demonstrations and negotiations, there has to be some activation of parental involvement. Whose community is this? Whose children are these? Don’t want to hear that you don’t have time because you have to work. Don’t want to hear that Bloomie is going to do what he wants to anyway because he has lots of money. At some point it can’t just be about the money. We are either the majority and of value, or we are just ineffective complainers.
Bloomie has shown that he has little to no regard for any of our feelings or needs. So let’s don’t think that you will be able to appeal to some sense of humanity - some sense of reason. He has more of a specimen approach when it comes to African Americans. He will try to get his way one way. If that doesn’t work, he’ll pretend to relent, and come at you in another way. He’ll pit two ends against the middle, and while we’re focusing on solving that emergency out of no where, he sneaks up the middle, or from the back and does what he originally intended. Remember, he’s the democrat who turned Repuglican to run for mayor. Then he stated he was an independent. Now what is he? He’s the one who pledged to uphold the two term decision, then vacated it via fiat, and stood stone faced while New Yorker after New Yorker stood in City Council voicing their anger, and still put a third term in place. He barely noticed them, because he had already decided that we didn’t count.
We now have Kathie Black, female puppet, in charge of our children’s education. New carte blanche as she rubber stamps Bloomie’s policies.
So if there is nothing new and different about his behavior and policies, there had better be something new and different about ours. We have to do more than protest. We have to do more than circulate petitions. We have to circle the wagons and begin to protect our communities.
Sadly, we lost Johnnie Cochrane a few years ago, and we’ve not had our own mouthpiece since then. We’ve not had someone who has had the Blackbone to take on the administration when it violates our rights, and take a principled stand in our behalf. So we need to either cultivate or hire our legal eagles, while at the same time putting together our activist crew, while at the same time putting together a parents brigade. We have to shut the city down and make sure that this man knows that the people in Brooklyn are as valid and powerful - as large and in charge, as they are in Manhattan.
Notice that I did not say don’t protest. We have to attack on all fronts. We have to make it clear that nobody moves until we get what we want, or stop them from doing what we don’t want.
But we then have to make sure we know what we want. We have to have standards and a criteria for education, and them make sure that we have the people who can step in and get the job done. If we want quality education at Paul Robeson, we had better make sure at the end of the day we have teachers who are qualified and committed to our children, and a higher standard than the ones Bloomberg and Black are putting forth.
We have to make sure that we have a curriculum reflective of the man the school was named for. You can’t just name the school after Paul Robeson and not have academic standards that will turn out Paul Robeson clones. We definitely could use a cadre of Robesons. And we have to make sure that we don’t compromise our standards for some crappy concept that has nothing to do with our children’s intellectual development.
We now have to be about it. We now have to let those who walk around paying lip service to autonomy but cower in the shadows when it comes time to make a stand.
Brother Jitu Weusi has always been in the forefront of our education and rights. He’s carried that banner and still carries it because we lack those who would come behind him and take the baton and keep on going. His love for us is evident and unwavering. Now is the time to make sure we give him the support, take some of the weight off him, while at the same time learning from him so we can go forth benefiting from his wisdom and expertise.
You had better be about saving Paul Robeson School as well as any other Black institutions in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, Westchester, Long Island - they represent and belong to us. Now is the time to stand up for them in order to have a future. What we do now will determine what happens tomorrow.
STAY BLESSED/GDW
PUBLIC URGED TO GET INVOLVED BY COMMITTEE TO SAVE PAUL ROBESON HIGH SCHOOL
By Jitu K. Weusi
Paul Robeson High School (150 Albany Ave. between Dean and Bergen Streets) is under the knife of Mayor Michael Bloomberg D.O.E. I spent Saturday afternoon, Jan 8th, 2011 meeting with school officials (teachers, guidance counselors and Asst Principals), parents, and students who are working enthusiastically to save the school and keep it open for future students. They dispute the label given by Bloomberg’s Department of Education of Paul Robeson as an”ineffective school”. They cited the increased four year graduation rate, the enthusiastic student body and increased recognition of the school for citations and awards as signs that Robeson is on the upswing.
I must admit that as a community resident of Central Brooklyn I am biased in favor of Paul Robeson. I remember when community members approached the Robeson family and asked for the permission to name this high school for the great man. I remember our picket lines for appeal to the Board of Education to appoint Ms. Marcia Lyles who was the first African American female principal of this academic high school. My eldest son graduated from Paul Robeson in four years and went on to graduate from the state university of Stoney Brook Long Island in four years. My son is currently a math coach at a New York City Public Middle School.
We are urging parents, community and students who are concerned about having community based effective high schools in Central Brooklyn to come out and Support Paul Robeson High School on Friday, Jan 21st, 2011.
Sign up at 5:00 p.m. and the hearing will begin at 6:00 p.m. Let your voice be heard. For information – Ms. Brown 718 809 8788 or Ms. Siegel 347 721 2152.
The date may have passed, but the urgency has not. Make it your business to follow up and become part of the solution as we eliminate the problem of people making high handed decisions that only serve to eviscerate our community. Bring your A GAME. We’re playing for high stakes: THE VERY SOUL OF BROOKLYN.
NOTE: You may also email brother Jitu at jweusi@aol.com
Stay Blessed &
ECLECTICALLY BLACK
Gloria Dulan-Wilson
Gloria Dulan-Wilson Blog/ ECLECTICALLY BLACK NEWS
For Eclectic Black People
VIP: Views . Interests . Perspectives
Showing posts with label Penna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Penna. Show all posts
1.27.2010
Wall Street has a lot of nerve!!! Main Street Needs to Protest Wall Street Bonuses
By Gloria Dulan-Wilson
Generally, I make it a rule to never go to sleep with the news on. (Yes! I’m one of those people who live with TV in the background.) However, I dozed off around 4:30AM after having spent the night “fighting material” (a Lincoln University old school term for studying hard). Around 6:25 I heard something so disturbing, I was compelled to get up and write this article: Wall Street is Leading a Protest Against President Barack Obama! Today!
My subconscious said, “That can’t be possible. You’re having a nightmare. Pay no attention to that nonsense. You know they have better sense than that.” But the other side of my brain argued, “No they don’t. They’ll do anything to duck responsibility, maintain the status quo, and continue to suck off society until not even the marrow is left, while they collect their bonuses, and we collect unemployment and welfare!” With that my eyes popped open, I couldn’t sleep.
So, here I am, 6:40 in the morning, writing this piece. If this true, and it most likely is, then Main Street (the rest of America) has to protest Wall Street. Main Street needs to put Wall Street on notice that we are not going to let this nonsense go unchallenged.
Of course, it’s no accident that they chose the day of President Obama’s State of the Union Address to pull this prank. They have been trying to weasel out of their responsibility for collapsing the economy for the past two years. They’ve turned a blind eye to the plight of Main Street for decades. They had the temerity and the gall to flip Main Street Mortgages, securitizing them, and selling them, over encumbering them (I.e. loading them up with debt), while the home owners were being gouged with higher and higher prices, for lower and lower valued properties -- and at the same time dealing with an economy where increasingly lower and lower salaries were being offered for fewer and fewer jobs (with the bulk of the better paid positions being sent overseas). So eventually, and inevitably, the house of cards collapsed, literally -- along with cars, banks, insurance companies -- whole systems that were being carried by frustrated and beleagured home owners.
When the great collapse came -- guess who was in charge of the United States of America? Bush and all his cronies. It was like having Dracula in the White House. Were they surprised that this happened? Probably not. Did they care? As long as their cash kept flowing, most definitely not. Were there prepared to -- or even interested in -- doing something to help the struggling families who suddenly found themselves without a roof over their heads? Not in the least!
Were they prepared to help the Wall Street investment firms who caused the problem, and were righteously teetering on the brink of disaster, brought on by their own greed, stupidity, avariciousness? Can you say cover up, boys and girls? Remember that taxing the poor to save the rich has been around at least as long as the Bible. It's nothing new. You can bet that when they came on TV that Sunday morning in 2008, saying to the American public that they should do absolutely nothing, but that the President (Bush) should give them billions of bail out dollars, they were not in the least bit concerned about you. You were going to foot the bill, no matter what. Foot it, but not benefit from it. They were only about covering their asses -- er, I mean assets (sorry).
These “smartest minds” as they called themselves, announced that they're planning to protest President Obama! How dare they! The smartest minds are who got us into this mess to begin with. We really need to send a signal to them. Ain’t no business as usual in Wall Street. The President, via our Attorney General, should not stop until a forensic investigation of every transaction that has negatively affected us and the US in general is conducted.
President Obama is calling for greater regulation of the financial sector, and it’s quite probably they are now feeling the heat breathing down their necks. And it’s about time. I suspect the reason we didn’t have financial literacy classes in elementary, middle, and high school, is because, armed with the appropriate information, Wall Street would have never have been able to undermine the stability of the economy. When everybody knows and understands how a system works, and has an interest and involvement in it, it’s pretty difficult to get away with what they’ve been able to get away with.
Think about it, we in New York City, live in a society where the biggest industry we have is money and investment, but I daresay, less that 12% of New Yorkers in the five boroughs of Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island, have working knowledge of Wall Street; much less ongoing investments in the mid to high end stocks, let alone municipal bonds. It’s certainly not taught in any of the 19 schools Bloomberg’s henchmen just closed. Hmmmm! When adult education courses are offered, rarely are programs offered in financial literacy or demystifying Wall Street.
While the rank and file of Wall Street live in a home where the median income is $250,000 annually and upwards to $millions, we, the “little people” are acting as though $35,000 puts us in the middle class income bracket (well it does if both husband and wife are earning $35,000 each); but you’re struggling if it turns out that you have an over priced apartment, or if your mortgage exceeds $1200 a month, and you have children; possibly a car. You’re struggling.
I love money just as much as the next person. I'd love to be independently wealthy. But not by climbing on the backs of the rest of society to do so. And if my actions caused the severe privations currently faced with rampant foreclosures, business failures, people losing their jobs, how could I (or Wall Street) in clear consciousness, expect to receive a bonus?
Now, these same proposed Wall Street protesters who may have caused you to lose even your basic means of support, have the temerity and the gall to try to protest President Obama. Obama, who has assiduously worked to restructure the broken toy (the economy is like a broken toy that your big brother or sister gives you after he or she has ruined it, taken all the fun and life out of it, and then sits back smugly while you try to make it go, knowing all along they still have a key piece in their back pocket). These characters (oops! I almost called them cretins -- but how could the smartest guys in the room be cretins? Duh) want to protest him?
Don't you find it interesting that they didn't protest the bogus wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan? Don't you find it amazing that none of them have been sent overseas? But you can bet that they are underwriting some of the weaponry that is purchased for the war. Remember elementary economics: Guns and Butter. Guns are more important than butter. (by the reason they are asking dumb questions about how the Health Care Bill will be paid for is because they are making far more money paying for a losing war -- their return on their investment (ROI) is through the stratosphere. And when it looks as if we are moving in the direction of pulling our troops and ending the war, the pull an old photo and recording of Bin Laudin out of somewhere with some new threat, and we end up sending more troops whether we needed to or not. They'd protest ending the war, not because we don't need to be there, but because it's messing with their favorite cash cow.
So let's protest Wall Street. Let’s protest them for trying to collect bonuses for a job poorly done. Let’s protest Wall Street for lying to the public. Let’s protest Wall Street until every penny of those so-called bonuses go to underwrite New York’s economy. Let’s protest them until every one of those homes that went up in flames via mortgage backed securities (please don’t put the blame on the so-called sub prime loans -- it’s really all Wall Street, either overt or covert), get’s at least $100,000 to pay down some of their mortgage or move into a new home, after their home was foreclosed upon. Let’s protest Wall Street, and put a freeze on any and all funds over and above salaries that they are trying to sneak and give to each other, while the rest of us go twisting in the wind.
In other words: Don’t let Wall Street get away with this garbage! Tie their feet to the fire. Make them understand that we are all human beings, and deserve to be treated with honesty, integrity, respect -- i.e. humanely! And at the same time, we should demand that our education system immediately implement ongoing financial literacy education and training programs, beginning with our first graders, and continuing through college FREE of charge; as well as a remedial Adult Education Financial Literacy program for those of us who went through this system and did not receive the basics.
By the way, for those of you who think that the Wall Street protest is nothing serious, just remember these facts: Barack Obama is the first Black President in the United States; he’s taken on a system that was morally bankrupt from beginning to end. He’s catching hell in the press, not because he’s not doing a good job. In fact, check the real records. He's doing an excellent job. But Mephistopheles is in the game; Machiavelli is setting the tone for the Republicans -- because this is the way Republicans operate -- and remember who runs the mainstream media and Wall Street -- oh, yes Right Wing, conservative, Republicans.
Remember two years ago when there were seas and seas of Obama buttons because America finally woke up and found itself in the middle of a mess (once again) thanks to the Bush Administration? We once a member of the opposition party gets into office, they do their best to try to make his life and administration a living hell. They did it Clinton. They did it to Carter. They will try to do it to Obama, too. But we’re not going to sit back and let that happen this time. This time we should be astute enough to recognize their m.o. (method of operaton/modus operandii ) by now.
So, with that in mind, let’s not only protest Wall Street protesters, because they are part and parcel the reason we’re in the mess we’re in now; but let’s get those financial literacy classes going -- whether in the schools, or in our many churches (probably better if done in church, it may actually keep the greed factor in church if economics is taught from the standpoint of being our brothers and sisters keepers).
And while you’re at it, get out your Obama buttons, tee shirts, posters, caps, cups, clips, pens; support OFA, and any other organizations that support President Obama, or form one of your own, locally, nationally, internationally. It’s going to be a long haul and a bumpy ride. If you think that you’ve done something by electing him -- you’re definitely right, and have a great deal to be proud of. But we now have to make sure that the agenda we helped him become elected on is implemented, and not circumvented via political expediency and yellow striped blue dogs, filibustering miscreants who are only concerned about party issues, not people issues.
Every time an election comes up, a referendum, or any measure, think "how does this affect Obama, therefore me and my family. You have to vote the same way you did when Obama was running for president. You have to line up to the polls the same way you did on November 4, 2008. You have to send a signal for all times that we are alive, large and in charge, and are using our activism and our constitutional right to vote to make sure the guy we put in office doesn't get sidelined by insidious, duplicitous activities that in the long run undermine us.
Now more than ever YES WE CAN has to be our watchword when it comes to supporting President Barack Obama. Supporting him is supporting America - black, brown, yellow; Red, white, blue.
Stay Blessed &
ECLECTICALLY BLACK
Gloria Dulan-Wilson
Generally, I make it a rule to never go to sleep with the news on. (Yes! I’m one of those people who live with TV in the background.) However, I dozed off around 4:30AM after having spent the night “fighting material” (a Lincoln University old school term for studying hard). Around 6:25 I heard something so disturbing, I was compelled to get up and write this article: Wall Street is Leading a Protest Against President Barack Obama! Today!
My subconscious said, “That can’t be possible. You’re having a nightmare. Pay no attention to that nonsense. You know they have better sense than that.” But the other side of my brain argued, “No they don’t. They’ll do anything to duck responsibility, maintain the status quo, and continue to suck off society until not even the marrow is left, while they collect their bonuses, and we collect unemployment and welfare!” With that my eyes popped open, I couldn’t sleep.
So, here I am, 6:40 in the morning, writing this piece. If this true, and it most likely is, then Main Street (the rest of America) has to protest Wall Street. Main Street needs to put Wall Street on notice that we are not going to let this nonsense go unchallenged.
Of course, it’s no accident that they chose the day of President Obama’s State of the Union Address to pull this prank. They have been trying to weasel out of their responsibility for collapsing the economy for the past two years. They’ve turned a blind eye to the plight of Main Street for decades. They had the temerity and the gall to flip Main Street Mortgages, securitizing them, and selling them, over encumbering them (I.e. loading them up with debt), while the home owners were being gouged with higher and higher prices, for lower and lower valued properties -- and at the same time dealing with an economy where increasingly lower and lower salaries were being offered for fewer and fewer jobs (with the bulk of the better paid positions being sent overseas). So eventually, and inevitably, the house of cards collapsed, literally -- along with cars, banks, insurance companies -- whole systems that were being carried by frustrated and beleagured home owners.
When the great collapse came -- guess who was in charge of the United States of America? Bush and all his cronies. It was like having Dracula in the White House. Were they surprised that this happened? Probably not. Did they care? As long as their cash kept flowing, most definitely not. Were there prepared to -- or even interested in -- doing something to help the struggling families who suddenly found themselves without a roof over their heads? Not in the least!
Were they prepared to help the Wall Street investment firms who caused the problem, and were righteously teetering on the brink of disaster, brought on by their own greed, stupidity, avariciousness? Can you say cover up, boys and girls? Remember that taxing the poor to save the rich has been around at least as long as the Bible. It's nothing new. You can bet that when they came on TV that Sunday morning in 2008, saying to the American public that they should do absolutely nothing, but that the President (Bush) should give them billions of bail out dollars, they were not in the least bit concerned about you. You were going to foot the bill, no matter what. Foot it, but not benefit from it. They were only about covering their asses -- er, I mean assets (sorry).
These “smartest minds” as they called themselves, announced that they're planning to protest President Obama! How dare they! The smartest minds are who got us into this mess to begin with. We really need to send a signal to them. Ain’t no business as usual in Wall Street. The President, via our Attorney General, should not stop until a forensic investigation of every transaction that has negatively affected us and the US in general is conducted.
President Obama is calling for greater regulation of the financial sector, and it’s quite probably they are now feeling the heat breathing down their necks. And it’s about time. I suspect the reason we didn’t have financial literacy classes in elementary, middle, and high school, is because, armed with the appropriate information, Wall Street would have never have been able to undermine the stability of the economy. When everybody knows and understands how a system works, and has an interest and involvement in it, it’s pretty difficult to get away with what they’ve been able to get away with.
Think about it, we in New York City, live in a society where the biggest industry we have is money and investment, but I daresay, less that 12% of New Yorkers in the five boroughs of Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Staten Island, have working knowledge of Wall Street; much less ongoing investments in the mid to high end stocks, let alone municipal bonds. It’s certainly not taught in any of the 19 schools Bloomberg’s henchmen just closed. Hmmmm! When adult education courses are offered, rarely are programs offered in financial literacy or demystifying Wall Street.
While the rank and file of Wall Street live in a home where the median income is $250,000 annually and upwards to $millions, we, the “little people” are acting as though $35,000 puts us in the middle class income bracket (well it does if both husband and wife are earning $35,000 each); but you’re struggling if it turns out that you have an over priced apartment, or if your mortgage exceeds $1200 a month, and you have children; possibly a car. You’re struggling.
I love money just as much as the next person. I'd love to be independently wealthy. But not by climbing on the backs of the rest of society to do so. And if my actions caused the severe privations currently faced with rampant foreclosures, business failures, people losing their jobs, how could I (or Wall Street) in clear consciousness, expect to receive a bonus?
Now, these same proposed Wall Street protesters who may have caused you to lose even your basic means of support, have the temerity and the gall to try to protest President Obama. Obama, who has assiduously worked to restructure the broken toy (the economy is like a broken toy that your big brother or sister gives you after he or she has ruined it, taken all the fun and life out of it, and then sits back smugly while you try to make it go, knowing all along they still have a key piece in their back pocket). These characters (oops! I almost called them cretins -- but how could the smartest guys in the room be cretins? Duh) want to protest him?
Don't you find it interesting that they didn't protest the bogus wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan? Don't you find it amazing that none of them have been sent overseas? But you can bet that they are underwriting some of the weaponry that is purchased for the war. Remember elementary economics: Guns and Butter. Guns are more important than butter. (by the reason they are asking dumb questions about how the Health Care Bill will be paid for is because they are making far more money paying for a losing war -- their return on their investment (ROI) is through the stratosphere. And when it looks as if we are moving in the direction of pulling our troops and ending the war, the pull an old photo and recording of Bin Laudin out of somewhere with some new threat, and we end up sending more troops whether we needed to or not. They'd protest ending the war, not because we don't need to be there, but because it's messing with their favorite cash cow.
So let's protest Wall Street. Let’s protest them for trying to collect bonuses for a job poorly done. Let’s protest Wall Street for lying to the public. Let’s protest Wall Street until every penny of those so-called bonuses go to underwrite New York’s economy. Let’s protest them until every one of those homes that went up in flames via mortgage backed securities (please don’t put the blame on the so-called sub prime loans -- it’s really all Wall Street, either overt or covert), get’s at least $100,000 to pay down some of their mortgage or move into a new home, after their home was foreclosed upon. Let’s protest Wall Street, and put a freeze on any and all funds over and above salaries that they are trying to sneak and give to each other, while the rest of us go twisting in the wind.
In other words: Don’t let Wall Street get away with this garbage! Tie their feet to the fire. Make them understand that we are all human beings, and deserve to be treated with honesty, integrity, respect -- i.e. humanely! And at the same time, we should demand that our education system immediately implement ongoing financial literacy education and training programs, beginning with our first graders, and continuing through college FREE of charge; as well as a remedial Adult Education Financial Literacy program for those of us who went through this system and did not receive the basics.
By the way, for those of you who think that the Wall Street protest is nothing serious, just remember these facts: Barack Obama is the first Black President in the United States; he’s taken on a system that was morally bankrupt from beginning to end. He’s catching hell in the press, not because he’s not doing a good job. In fact, check the real records. He's doing an excellent job. But Mephistopheles is in the game; Machiavelli is setting the tone for the Republicans -- because this is the way Republicans operate -- and remember who runs the mainstream media and Wall Street -- oh, yes Right Wing, conservative, Republicans.
Remember two years ago when there were seas and seas of Obama buttons because America finally woke up and found itself in the middle of a mess (once again) thanks to the Bush Administration? We once a member of the opposition party gets into office, they do their best to try to make his life and administration a living hell. They did it Clinton. They did it to Carter. They will try to do it to Obama, too. But we’re not going to sit back and let that happen this time. This time we should be astute enough to recognize their m.o. (method of operaton/modus operandii ) by now.
So, with that in mind, let’s not only protest Wall Street protesters, because they are part and parcel the reason we’re in the mess we’re in now; but let’s get those financial literacy classes going -- whether in the schools, or in our many churches (probably better if done in church, it may actually keep the greed factor in church if economics is taught from the standpoint of being our brothers and sisters keepers).
And while you’re at it, get out your Obama buttons, tee shirts, posters, caps, cups, clips, pens; support OFA, and any other organizations that support President Obama, or form one of your own, locally, nationally, internationally. It’s going to be a long haul and a bumpy ride. If you think that you’ve done something by electing him -- you’re definitely right, and have a great deal to be proud of. But we now have to make sure that the agenda we helped him become elected on is implemented, and not circumvented via political expediency and yellow striped blue dogs, filibustering miscreants who are only concerned about party issues, not people issues.
Every time an election comes up, a referendum, or any measure, think "how does this affect Obama, therefore me and my family. You have to vote the same way you did when Obama was running for president. You have to line up to the polls the same way you did on November 4, 2008. You have to send a signal for all times that we are alive, large and in charge, and are using our activism and our constitutional right to vote to make sure the guy we put in office doesn't get sidelined by insidious, duplicitous activities that in the long run undermine us.
Now more than ever YES WE CAN has to be our watchword when it comes to supporting President Barack Obama. Supporting him is supporting America - black, brown, yellow; Red, white, blue.
Stay Blessed &
ECLECTICALLY BLACK
Gloria Dulan-Wilson
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