This month, President Obama gave his last State of the Union address on live TV, radio, and social media.
Though we ultimately saw a more aggressive Barack Obama than the humble timid man who first entered the White House on the third week of January 2009, seven years ago this month, Negro/ Colored/ Black/ Pan/ African/ Americans have made several unified missteps since Obama took office for his first term.
One of those missteps turned out to be the one that cost many lives and quality of life; and poisoned an entire city filled with mostly poor and poverty-stricken people, most of whom are Black.
The first misstep (1) had to do with outright unified fear and uncertainty about whether or not the irrevocable “they” were going to let him live and finish his first term of office; the second (2) had to do with his own anxiety about what the future held as his words mimicked my own “we got a lot of work to do”; the third (3) had to do with what his precarious position would mean in the end if he made it; the fourth (4) had to do with whether or not he would be re-elected in the second term and live through it without being assassinated; the fifth (5) had to do with our corporate “image” as Black people in the world, one which was going to be set in stone either way he went, with every move he made and every breath he took; the sixth (6) had to do with how long he was going to be in office before history was re-painted by the irrevocable “they” in order to appear as if his election caused all the problems that were there before him; and the seventh (7) had to do with the many Black folks that he hired from the outset and took with him to DC. How long would they, could they, last?
This year also marks the seventh year since my book “The United States of Georgia” was published.
In it, I voiced all of those concerns and several more, and then ended with “only time would tell.” Well, time has told and I am going on official record as the first to say “I told you so.”
I used to hate “toljaso’s.” People who did “toljaso” were just braggarts who thought they knew it all.
However, now that what I perceived in 2009 would happen has happened, I can look back over the landscape of Black America in 2016 and make one great final statement as we usher The President out the door and into history, with his well-planned and often-sabotaged legacy in his steady trained hands. Now is the time to take a sit-down and assess where and how we get royally screwed on his way out.
No, I won’t do the “Black people blame” thing this time–even if it is well-deserved; but I will talk about Van Jones and how no one put up a big fight about the way he was jostled out of Washington, DC on the biggest Pale Horse the empowered elite could find. I will talk about how not even the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) backed him up on his way out.
He stated that he got some minor encouragement from significant others who told him to stay, hang in there and fight, and even President Obama told him he had his back if he decided to stay and fight, but nevertheless … Jones resigned amid the pressure, the same old race-control pressure valve of alleged “reverse racism” solidly in place.
To be sure, when they call you a racist for fighting against racism, the world has lost its place in the stronghold of the Heavenlies.
Said Jones, Sept. 6, 2009 Washington Post, “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me…They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.” He continued: “I have been inundated with calls — from across the political spectrum — urging me to ‘stay and fight.’ But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.”
Truly, no one knew enough about Jones and his fight against environmental impact racism in the poorest and Blackest areas of the nation, where dumping toxins was just never a big enough deal to make it to The Hill. No one knew enough about Lisa Jackson at the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), either, before she -a Black woman- was whittled down to the eraser butt end of a pencil blunt and quit after the President’s first term. No one knew a lot about Desiree Rogers, but then she was the one who got herself fired for hobnobbing with the bigwigs and calling the Obama Family a “brand” instead of doing her job. With Rogers, the sabotage happened almost overnight and the First Lady’s Social Secretary was easily replaced by a white woman who wanted the job badly and was hoping a McCain win would lock it down for her.
With Jackson and Jones, the sabotage was not quite as easy to track down. However, what we do know now –too little, too late– is that we should have raised all holy get-out hayell when Jones was forced out; and we should have had Jackson’s back from the onset. President Obama hired the right people from Day One, with the same wisdom and insight that he has now, and they should all still be there right now, except for Rogers of course.
Jones and Jackson would have both been there before Flint, Michigan’s poorest and Blackest populations got devastated and came this close to an emergency wipeout. As a matter of information, the poisoned waterways are banned even by those who poisoned them. Gov. Snyder’s intent was to wipe out all of the people in Flint that he possibly could and hope he’d covered himself with the appropriate accepted lies.
The two people that were there to hear their outcries before all hell broke loose were easily replaced with two money-grubbing whites who could have cared less whether they live or die, still don’t. And there will be more like it. On THEIR watch.
It isn’t just the Governor of Michigan who should be arrested, as Michael Moore, a Flint native, has petitioned us to do — Jones and Jackson should be called back to the White House with the two who replaced them replaced immediately to deal with this crisis in a way that makes certain it never happens again. They both need to be fired. Yesterday.
Again, there is only one racist innuendo left for President Obama that they have not used yet: “The Maintenance Man.” Some of us Black folks are always cleaning up white folkses messes, inside and out. Even their 9-11 mess that we, Black Americans, told them not to get into in the first place or they would live to regret it.
Green Collar Economy, by Van Jones, October 2009
#arrestGovSnyder
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