A Slave in the White House

From Kalpulli Community

Letter from the Founder
Once again, There’s a Slave in the White House
My dear relatives everywhere:
If you listen to the official narrative of US history, slavery was ended on January 1 1863.
First of all in those areas still occupied by the so-called confederate states slavery continued until the spring of 1865.
Secondly if we’re honest with ourselves, it never died. Whether we’re talking about the exploitation of farm workers, particularly in Florida or California, or the mental slavery visited upon not only people of color but just about everyone else.
The gentleman currently occupying the white house is a perfect example of a house slave.
Allow me to explain:
During the official slave times there was a class system with in the ranks of slaves. At the low end were the field workers, at the high end were the people who were allowed to lives in the houses of the plantation owners. More often than not they supervised the people in fields and people in the shops, if the plantation had shops.
During 2008 it was very clear to many of us that the then-candidate Barak Hussein Obama was doing a whole lot more jiving and hustling than articulating the substantive and progressive view of the future. Millions of idealistic and in some cases desperate people worked tirelessly to get this man elected to the office of president, only to have their dreams shattered in slow motion, over the past year.
As an observer and student of the American tragedy, I take no pleasure in saying I Told You So, but I did tell you so.
In the days following the election, during the all-too long transitional period from one pres. to another, Obama revealed himself by the company he kept. He surrounded himself with the worst of the worst. Let us begin with Rahm the Thug Emmanuel, White House chief of staff.
A man who has famously used the F word to describe real liberals and presumably those of us who are positively radical. He even plunged a steak knife into a table during the Clinton campaign in 1992, in reference to liberals. He has kept Obama on a short leash with a choke hold. It seems that there’s only one way out of this for Mr. Obama and the rest of us. We need a bottom –up revolution to reinvent this country. The first step is to give Pres. Obama one last chance to clean up his act and stop being the 21st Century equivalent to the Top Slave n the Master’s house. I call upon billions of you everywhere to bombard the White House with emails, phone calls, snail mail, until Barak Hussein Obama takes the following steps:

He needs to get rid of Rahm Emanuel immediately. He needs to get rid of Larry Summers, Jim Geithner, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice, our ambassador to the UN. He needs to slam his foot down and get super-tough with the Congress, including a comprehensive single-payer health care package. Not a piece of complicated trash involving thousands of pages. In a word, he needs to get Principled and metaphorically kill business as usual.

I taught in a University in the late 70’s in Detroit. Both Pres Obama and the first lady remind me of some of my African American students at that time. It’s one thing to be unprincipled, but to be scared, desperate, and all too willing to please their white handlers, is another matter all together. If Obama doesn’t clean up his act, as I’ve said in previous commentary, Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity will convene an online gathering of all of the principled and progressive possibilities for 2012, including Cynthia McKinney Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzales, and others. To see if we can put egos aside, and have one last shot at accomplishing good with electoral politics.
It is our prayer that Mr. Obama sees this letter. He needs to get off his corporate high horse, he needs to stop worrying about pleasing his white handlers, he needs to stand up to the military-industrial-media-academic complex. IF he doesn’t, let history sweep him aside and let us truly take this nation back and reinvent it.
I for one couldn’t care less if purveyors of trash like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh crack up in front of their microphones. We as a society can do infinitely better than what we’re doing.
At Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity we are consciously creating a substantive vision which covers the waterfront from restoring respect for women to ecological and cultural restoration, health care with emphasis on prevention and cures, ending militarism once and for all, and creating nations, not empires or superpowers.
These are big orders and there will be many more coming down the pipe.
Finally, my relatives, speaking for my fellow Kalpullistas and directors, I want to throw out a challenge: to wealthy, would-be progressive organizations such as MoveOn.org and the Huffington Post. I want to throw out a similar challenge to the rank and file children, women and men around the world: go through our website with a fine-toothed comb.
Read every composition including Becca’s essay on potential. My challenge to all of you is this: Ralph Nader argues that social change is fueled by money. To the rank and file: if each of you would send us a dollar, Kalpulli Turtle Island Multiversity will be able to live up to the great call of John Coltrane, which I’ll paraphrase: This organization wishes to be and will be a force for good everywhere.
As for those of you who have tons of money, in the organizations mentioned above, including Dr. George Soros, come up with some serious money for serious work. Today I heard the great lawyer Mr. Mike Patantonio criticize organizations which failed to support his work because his ideas are his ideas, not theirs. People, we need to put our egos aside and come together because if we don’t-- the US in particular, and much of the rest of the world in general-- we may be flirting with full-blown fascism before the end of this year. Barring a miracle, the democratic party is spineless and the job of developing, articulating and applying a positively radical agenda must be ours. In 1935, labor leaders told Franklin Roosevelt what they wanted. His reply: “Make me.”

To some degree, they made him do what needed to be done.

Obama may have said the same thing in ’08. If hundreds of millions of people get off their collective arses, harass the White House and send us some money, we might actually begin to put a hole in what the great Lakota scholar Vine DeLoria calls “this intellectual dark age.”
In short, we are putting forth a vision, but we are also going to tango with the bad guys, if needed. Finally, let us thank each other in advance for having gotten rid of Rahm Emanuel and the rest of the thugs who surround Obama. Let us thank each other in advance for FORCING Obama to do what he doesn’t want to do. As an Italian-American, I didn’t want the late and unlamented Prince Machiavelli living in the white house, metaphorically or otherwise.

Brother Barak,

to borrow a line from your fellow Afrikan, the great Charles Mengus, “You better get it in your soul and take care of business,” now. Or you’ll be the proof positive that we not only didn’t defeat racism, we reinforced it. To borrow a line from the Motown song Get on Up, get rid of the dead weight, bring back Brother Van Jones, tell Vince McConnell, Jim Dement, and the rest of those crackers from the south that the game is up. If you don’t, all I can say is Goodbye.

These are my words and I take full responsibility for them.
Thank you, peace and love
Brother Ray