Obama off to a good start with FOI and Presidential Records Act.

[Magda Hassan]

Obamanation: A Lesson In Black*Power Being Black in the US means something. *It implies an understanding of power and oppression. *It implies an inclination and proclivity to side with those that resist oppression and exploitation, the Black nation having a history of acute experience with those forces. That said, does it matter if we have sitting, the first Black chairman in the 221 years of the House’s existence, if he sits idly by and congratulates a president-elect that promises to embrace imperial foreign policy across Africa and the so-called Middle East? Does it matter if that President-Elect’s skin happens to be Black if his office appoints an Attorney General that advocates more of a draconian domestic policy already *decimating Black communities? Does it matter if we are greeted by the first ever Black Attorney General if he wants to make possession with (cop’s discretion) intent to distribut a 5 year felony? Does it matter, in 2008, the color of the faces of a system that is grinding into dust, the bones of Black and Brown Americans and Iraqis alike? Hell yes, it matters so much that he is Black. *But not as a justification for backslapping celebration. *Obama is a tool of the ruling class and when the power of Blackness is used by the ruling class it is Black power in reverse, turned around to use as a weapon against everyone except the ruling class.

Obama will be for black liberation what Thatcher was for women's liberation.