Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Lip Glossing :: The Silly Season Is In

The latest in the Lipstick “controversy”…

For those not following, yesterday on the stump Barack Obama made a comment referring to McCain’s claims of being an agent of change.

“That’s just calling something that’s the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig,” he said, then paused for the line to sink in. “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It’s still going to stink, after eight years.

No truth, by the way, to the rumor that Obama’s next line was, “When we start the revolution all they’ll probably do is squeal.” Too bad.

The line became the top news story in many markets around the country. Because Palin had made a joke about pitbulls, lipstick, and hockey moms, the question was: did Obama call Palin a pig?

This morning the Republicans released this web ad.

This morning, the lipstick crisis took Obama out of his game. He had planned to talk about education at a rally in Norfolk, Virginia. Instead, he had to address the McCain campaign:

“Enough. I don’t care what they say about me. But I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift Boat politics. Enough is enough.”

We’ve got an energy crisis. We have an education system that is not working for too many of our children and making us less competitive. We have an economy that is creating hardship for families all across America. We’ve got two wars going on, veterans coming home not being cared for — and this is what they want to talk about.

You know who ends up losing at the end of the day? It’s not the Democratic candidate. It’s not the Republican candidate. It’s you, the American people. Because then we go another year, or another four years or another eight years without addressing the issues that matter to you.”

Bring on the debates already.

posted by @ 9:02 am | 0 Comments

Sunday, September 7th, 2008

Bigger Than Hip-Hop :: A Q+A With Kevin Powell

On Tuesday, New York voters will go to the polls in an important Democratic primary. 42 year-old, former Vibe writer Kevin Powell faces off against 74 year-old, 26-year veteran Congressman Edolphus Towns for one of Brooklyn’s 3 House seats in Washington D.C.

It’s one of the most closely watched races in the country, in no small part because of the contest’s implications for generational change. There are echoes here of the Obama-McCain battle.

Powell calls himself a voice for change, and has hammered at Towns for backsliding on crucial issues like free trade, and for losing touch with his community. (Towns supported Rudy Giuliani for mayor in 1997 and barely won his last primary in 2004.) Yet Towns holds a major fundraising advantage, and has said that Brooklyn voters have no time for on-the-job training for Powell.

I recently had a chance to correspond with Powell on his candidacy and the meaning of the 2008 elections as he was jetting back from Obama’s nomination speech in Denver. Here’s what he had to say, uncut:

Q: A lot of attention has been focused on the presidential race this year. But how much do so-called “down-ticket” races such as yours mean to young urban voters?

A: My election is not actually a down ticket at all. It is a Democratic primary on Tuesday, September 9th in a majority Democratic city, which means that whoever wins my Congressional race, will be the next Congressperson for Brooklyn, NY’s 10th Congressional district. Obviously I plan on winning.

Additionally, I have been a community organizer and political activist for the past 24 years, since I was a youth and student activist back in the 1980s. It is not just young Americans of all different backgrounds who need to become more politically aware, it is all Americans.

From back in the day to my campaign now, I cannot begin to tell you how many people, regardless of age and background, who do not understand electoral politics at all, be it the presidential election every four years, or local races like mine. In fact, I would argue that local races are far more important because they directly impact the day to day lives of our communities.

It is local electeds who determine what kind of money and resources flow back to our communities, what kinds of businesses and industries come, or don’t come, what kinds of schools we have, and so on. So part of my mission as a leader in these times is very serious political education, not just getting folks to vote for me.

We’ve got to cease being a nation of hype. That is, we get hyped for a political candidate because she or he is younger, hipper, hip-hop, or something like that. And that is simply not good enough.

As I sat in that Denver stadium the other day listening to Barack Obama with those other 80,000 people, naturally I was very proud. But I also thought to myself I have been a part of incredible movements before, back in the 1980s when folks like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan were moving millions of younger people. And there still has not been, for me, no single more incredible gathering than the Million Man March in 1995.

But we need movement in America now, a progressive and multicultural movement of people from Generations X and Y. Young people who understand hiphop and pop culture in general, technology including the various handheld devices and social networks, the history of America and the world on at least a basic level, contemporary issues on at least a basic level, and are able to relate to a range of people, because they are culturally multilingual.

My point in all of this is that this is so much bigger than me or Barack Obama. Because after I get elected and Barack Obama gets elected we are still going to have racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, religious intolerance, ignorance, poverty, a terrible healthcare system, wars everywhere, including in Iraq, a polluted environment, mediocre public schools, and so on.

So younger people, of all backgrounds need to do what some of us did back in the 1980s: Jesse Jackson and his campaigns for president were the spark for our activism, for our social awareness, but then we took upon ourselves to become full-fledged leaders because we began to understand voting was just a piece of the work that needed to be done.

And that is the case today, too. Young Berg, the new hip-hop artist, asked me recently when was this CHANGE Barack Obama is promising going to happen? My response was simple: When YOU become the change you want to see, when YOU make it happen, when YOU understand the leadership we are waiting for is US. That is the message we need to be putting out there very clearly to young America.

Q: In many ways, your candidacy has echoes of the presidential primary and general election contests, with your theme of “new leadership” pitted against your opponent’s theme of “experience”. What do you think really separates young hip-hop generation leaders from a previous generation of leaders?

A: I think there is an overemphasis on hip-hop, number one. Back in the 1980s there was a wave of us who were, without question, hip-hop heads. Myself, Sister Souljah, Ras Baraka, and many others who understood that just given the world we were a part of, that hip-hop had to be a part of the conversation.

For example, I came up as a graf writer and b-boy and could recite any and every hip-hop lyric of that era, and certainly dressed the part. But we NEVER referred to ourselves as hip-hop leaders, or hip-hop activists, or anything of the sort. This is a very new thing, and, to me, a very tired thing, just the way back in the 1970s people felt compelled to put the word SOUL on everything.

A leader is a leader, an activist is an activist, as long as she or he is doing the work.

But I do need to say we worked very tirelessly with hip-hop artists of that time, the leading ones, like Public Enemy, like KRS-One, like LL Cool J, like Heavy D, like Ice Cube, and many others because we understood, instinctively, that, as Souljah said twenty years ago, any movement that post-Civil Rights generations have MUST be mass marketed to the people.

Well, clearly hip-hop is the greatest mass marketing tool we’ve ever created. And obviously, now hip-hop America is multiple generations. There is no one hip-hop generation, so we need to stop saying that. I see that as I campaign every single day in Brooklyn: there are folks between the ages of 35 and nearly 50 who came of age with hip-hop, who are hip-hop heads, who know my work as a hip-hop head. Then there are the teenagers and 20-somethings, also hip-hop heads.

So one of the main things that separates us from the old guard is our natural ability to relate to wide age ranges of people in our community. On top of that, we know the different ways to communicate in the 21st century, which is why my campaign does not just knock on doors and pass our flyers. We also do mad e-blasts, we have myspace, facebook, and other social network pages, we do text messaging to handheld devices, we have a mixed cd produced by DJ Reborn and hosted by DJ Drama (who I have known since he was a pre-teen, and whose parents are both old school activists), and we do nonstop parties and media that appeals to young America, be they hip-hop or not.

The type of leadership I am representing is not interested solely in protest and marching and complaining of being a victim. Those days are over. I represent leadership that is about practical and proactive solutions.

For example, my 9th book is just coming out. It is called The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life. Every single contributor to the book, be it BET’s Jeff Johnson, the actor Hill Harper, filmmaker Byron Hurt, or scholar Jelani Cobb, is of what we call the hip-hop era.

So as folks read the books of essays around spirituality, political awareness, redefining Black manhood away from sexism, violence, and misogyny, hip-hop culture vs. the hip-hop industry, mental wellness, physical health, and stopping violence against women and girls, they are getting these solutions in the language of us, of the 21st century.

We are tired of leadership that is simply about reports and studies and conferences where the same people show up again and again, say the same things over and over again, and we walk with nothing practical and life-affirming to give our communities. That is what makes us different.

Others talk about it. We make it happen. And that making it happen, now, is being translated into our taking over the leadership of communities once and for all. It is time, and we have no other choice.

Q: What has been the most inspiring moment in your campaign so far this season?

A: Every single day for the past 12 months we’ve been campaigning has been inspiring. I love people, all people, and I could not imagine doing anything else with my life other than being a public servant, of being an activist and advocate for the people.

This is why I quit journalism many years back. I am always going to be a writer. Always, but even my writing is simply a tool to get information out to the people, to spark dialogue, which is why I write essays more than anything else now.

You want an inspiring moment: last night we had a pre-Labor Day fundraiser in the heart of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Great crowd, music being blazed by my dude DJ CEO. I addressed the crowd briefly, to thank them. I thought I was done for the night.

A young man named Richard came up to me, quite serious and passionate, and said he wanted to know why I was really running for Congress, and asked if I could get back on the mic. He basically challenged me, at 1am in the morning, to talk to the people.

So we turned the music off, and for the next 90 minutes, at a club, we held an impromptu townhall meeting covering issues like education, the state of young America, violence, you name it. And as always, the people asking questions and making comments realized, as I guided the dialogue and answered questions, that the solutions are right in front of us.

But it is only when we realize our individual and collective power that things will change in America, and on this planet. Erica Perkins, my Campaign Manager, and I left that club like WOW. This is what this work is about.

Wherever people want to think and talk, you give them that space to do their thing. And Richard, as I said to him over and over again from the stage, is a leader. That is what this is about, that is what inspires me. To get as many people as possible to know that self-empowerment and community empowerment is the route we must take. Anything less means we will forever see ourselves as powerless victims.

So folks walked away from the party last night ready to do, as you better believe I steered the conversation toward DOING. Great to talk, pontificate, theorize, all of that. But we need action, now, more than ever. That is what inspires me about this campaign, about Barack’s campaign: all the multitudes who are stepping up to do something. But it has to continue, as I said, beyond voting, it has to become a movement for change nationwide.

posted by @ 12:35 pm | 14 Comments

Friday, September 5th, 2008

Vibe.com@RNC :: Day 4: The C-Word

John McCain walked onstage at 9:11pm, to chants of “USA! USA!”

Outside, 400 more were being arrested as National Guard guarded the entrance to the Xcel Center, bringing the total to 818 for the week, a count smaller than only the 2004 Republican Convention held in New York City.

Eleven minutes into McCain’s speech, two protesters from Code Pink–sitting behind stage left near the nowhere that networks MSNBC and Al-Jazeera had been assigned to–began shouting “U.S. Out Of Iraq!” The crowd at the Xcel Center interrupted McCain’s speech again with more cries of “USA!”

And then it was all McCain’s stage.

He didn’t try to match the fervor of VP nominee Sarah Palin’s address the evening before. Instead he tried to portray himself as an experienced, determined fighter and above all, a break from the recent Republican past.

He spoke sometimes as if he wished the Bush II administration had never happened. He pointed the finger at corruption, big government, oil companies. “We lost [people’s] trust when we valued our power over our principles,” he said.

He received one of the biggest cheers of the night when he said, “We’re going to recover the people’s trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.”

But he also reached out to new constituencies, “the Latina daughter of migrant workers”, urban children in failing schools. He even proposed bridge pay and job retraining for unemployed workers, a proposal that labor and Democrats began making during the Reagan/Bush I years.

Still, his major domestic initiative, what he called “the most ambitious national project in decades”, was an energy plan that depended most of all on new oil drilling. Wednesday night, Sarah Palin offered her own semi-pristine Alaskan North Slope wilderness as a place to start as Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele, the only elected African American to address the RNC, coined a new phrase: “Drill, baby, drill!”

This is hardly seems the kind of domestic agenda that can reinvigorate a new Republican Party. This year, less than 2% of the Republican delegates were African American, less than 5% were Hispanic, and the count of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders not from Hawai’i was negligible.

Throughout the week, black and brown Republicans spoke about how frustrated they were to see the party going backward in time. Efforts to bring communities of color into the party, after all, had been a major initiative of Karl Rove and RNC Chair (and former Harvard Law classmate of Obama) Ken Mehlman. In 2004, 44% of Hispanics and 11% of African Americans voted for Dubya.

Yet since the retirement of J.C. Watts, the Republicans have had no prominent national elected African American. Their delegate total this year is the lowest in 40 years.

And although McCain has been well-respected in the Hispanic community for his stance on immigration reform, over two-thirds are expected to vote for Obama.

Michael Steele–who had won the support of Russell Simmons in his failed 2006 bid for the Senate–was candid in interviews this week. The lack of outreach is a recipe for disaster.

Ask the 20-year old white mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma, John Hammons–where Hammons says, per Merle Haggard, they still fly the American flag and respect the college dean.

He was 13 when 9/11 happened, and it became one of the formative events of his young life. But he calls himself not a “neoconservative” but a “new conservative”, distinguishing himself from older culture-war Republicans.

His generation, he says, views the nation and the world differently. He says his best friends are Vietnamese and Dominican, Buddhist and non-Christian. His town is now only 61% white. And as a young person, he too has been moved by the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy, even though he’s a solid McCain Republican.

“We’re letting go of some of those irrational fears that we have,” he says. “When you do something from fear, you regret it.”

John McCain asked the Xcel Center crowd to stand up and fight with him. He flipped an Obama line like jiujitsu, saying, “Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me-first country-second Warshington crowd: change is coming.”

But in the Grand Ole Party, it may be that change is not coming fast enough.

posted by @ 6:22 am | 2 Comments

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

Vibe.com@RNC :: Day 3: Red Meat

Props where they’re due: Sarah Palin came in with expectations lower than a bug, and delivered like a ninja.

Her mission: set herself up as the mother-next-door, then lance Barack Obama as an uptown liberal.

Boom boom.

She trotted out her son Track, who is about to deploy to Iraq. Her daughters (with no appearance from Bristol’s baby daddy). Her part Yup’ik Eskimo husband, the world champion snow machine racer. Even her infant with Downs Syndrome.

Before a crowd in which the only hand-painted signs either read “Palin Power” or “Hockey Moms 4 Palin”, she retold her single hockey mom/pit bull joke. The Michigan delegation, outfitted in hockey jerseys for the occasion, went craaazy.

Then she started it up. She tossed the red meat again, following the path of her warm-up, the king of the parade of the also-rans featuring Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee—Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani suggested Obama didn’t think Palin’s hometown Wasilla was “cosmopolitan enough”. (Obama has never said anything of the sort.) But Palin evoked old-school red-baiting: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer’, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

(Ain’t it funny how the meaning of ‘red’ has changed?)

Giuliani called Obama out of touch. Palin said, “In small towns, we don’t quote know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening. We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”

She raised the experience issue. “Listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform—not even in the state senate.”

The partisan crowd—which even at its most alive seemed straining to fill the arena—roared like a kennel of red nose pits.

They had chanted “Sarah” all night. For Obama, they chanted “Zero”.

Palin even dissed Obama’s “Styrofoam Greek columns” and all but dismissed his supporters as brainwashed followers.

“In politics,” she said, “there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those who, like John McCain, use their careers to promote change.”

Palin came off like Tina Fey beyond her most Hillaryest, delivering her punch lines like a savvy fighter. All this after a week in which Republicans had set expectations so low by giving the press over to her daughter’s baby troubles, that Palin could hit it off a tee and get on base. She stepped up and blasted it over the next block.

And yet if this were actually a battle cypher, let it be noted Palin got through round one with a pocket full of writtens.

It’s hardly clear how Palin will do on October 2nd at Washington University when she is separated from her teleprompters and facing off against Joe Biden, who has years of debates under his belt.

All that is certain is that the next two months will be no friendly game of baseball.

posted by @ 8:42 pm | 6 Comments

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Vibe.com@RNC :: Day 2: Once Again It’s On

Day 2 of the Republican convention came off with a frenzy of activity in the Xcel Center to get back up to speed after Hurricane Gustav rained on the parade. Scheduling wasn’t clear for much of the day. Delegates and media struggled to figure out what was up.

By showtime tonight, seats in the Center were still empty, even for a night-capping speech by Joe Lieberman that seemed repurposed from his short-lived glory days as Al Gore’s second fiddle, history repeating as parody. If his career ended tomorrow it would still be too soon.

The shortened convention may serve as an official explanation, but certainly this was the smallest role a sitting president has ever been given in recent memory. President Bush II–beamed in via satellite from a safe distance in the White House–seemed overshadowed even by the presence of his father and mother. The big chill between McCain and Dubya will go down in history as colder than even the arctic cool that blew between Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 2000.

Meanwhile, those on Cheney watch got stinking drunk for yet another night. They could be in the hospital with alcohol poisoning by Thursday.

Outside, there was a light rain all day, accompanied by purple clouds of tear gas. What looked like mere police incompetence and bullying on Monday–when added up with actions both over the weekend and through today–now looks like a pattern of suppression.

Convergence centers were raided, continuing a daily operation that began last Friday before the convention. The Ripple Effect concert was shut down early, before Rage Against The Machine was able to make an unannounced performance. Crowds trying to leave were barricaded.

A peaceful Poor People’s March turned ugly when pedestrians and protestors alike were pepper-sprayed. Even trad media cameramen and reporters were badgered by horse-riding cops.

Long after the protests ended this evening, innocent bicyclists in downtown Minneapolis were still being stopped randomly by police–brought in from as far away as Philadelphia. (And we already told you how much folks love bikes in this town.)

Sample line of questioning:

Are you anarchists?

Uh, no sir, we’re heading to The Wedge to buy some locally-grown organic lettuce.

Perhaps the most fun to be had today was at the Ron Paul rally, where the speaker list ranged from the entertaining (Jesse Ventura) to the abhorrent (Grover Norquist). Attracting over 10,000 committed libertarians and confused liberals, the day-long Rally for the Republic was like a rock show without the rock. Paul even speaks like Underdog. Ventura, in the Hulk role, announced interest in running in 4 years. Paul-Ventura, 2012? There’s no need to fear.

Tomorrow, Governor Sarah Palin should draw a full house for her time in the spotlight, family, future son-in-law and all. Another anti-war march is planned. Will that lettuce still be on the shelf?

posted by @ 10:20 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

B+’s Photos Of The DNC

Don’t miss these galleries at Vibe.com that chronicle last week’s events through the eyes of the brilliant B+.

posted by @ 8:50 pm | 0 Comments

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

Vibe.com@RNC :: Day 1: Music And Teargas

Yesterday, as Atmosphere stepped onstage at Harriet Island to rock a crowd of 10,000–Slug sporting a fashionable “Obama ’08” shirt–riot police just across the Mississippi were firing tear-gas cannisters and preventing hundreds more from crossing the bridge to get to the show.

Earlier that day, 20,000 had marched through the concrete canyons of St. Paul, carrying signs like “To Work Hard and Overtime, It Is Not A Crime: Immigration Reform First 100 Days”, “School Is For Learning, Not For Recruiting”, and “Heck Of A Job, Bushy”. Encompassing anti-war, pro-immigrant, and anti-Bush groups, the march was larger than anything seen in Denver, more diverse and celebratory.

A marching band played near a giant inflated globe. In front of the St. Paul Children’s Museum, little girls stared at the horses the riot cops sat on.

By 2pm, the main demonstration dissipated. The family marchers left across the bridge to Harriet Island for the SEIU concert and rally, and the day-long skirmishes between the anarchists and police intensified. A few hours later, unsuspecting stragglers to the concert found themselves caught in a militarized zone.

Black-bandanna’d anarchists hurled rocks, bricks, and trash at the black-suited riot police. Riot police fired rubber bullets back. Some who wanted an afternoon of music in the park were left bloodied and angry.

Hundreds of arrests later, the concert on the Minneapolis side of the river ended. As the show attendees walked back into St. Paul across the Robert Street bridge, at the request of Hennepin County police, squadrons of riot police arrived to block them. It was as if, unleashed and having drawn blood, they couldn’t wait to get more.

This was the news on a day the Republican Convention suspended most of its business and focused on Hurricane Gustav.

Cindy McCain and Laura Bush urged the delegates gathered in the otherwise strikingly empty Xcel Center to donate to the victims of Gustav. Hoping not to be outpositioned, Obama–perhaps the first candidate in recent memory not to receive a convention poll bounce, even after delivering a keynote that clocked Super Bowl ratings–cell-spammed supporters with a text message asking them to give $5 to the Red Cross, and to “Please fwd.”

At the demonstration, one marcher had held a sign on which he drew the southern part of the U.S., added a big hurricane symbol, and inscribed “Republicans: There When It Benefits Them.” By the end of this unusual day, though, the irony had become meta: Republicans seemed to be stacking benefits like chips.

posted by @ 7:03 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

On Slate.com :: Randy Newman’s "Korean Parents"

Here’s my piece on Randy Newman’s “Korean Parents” and his new album, Harps & Angels. A teaser…

Post-racial may be the new black, but race humor is as perilous as it ever was. This summer, satirists—from second-time offender Don Imus to The New Yorker’s Barry Blitt—have found being funny on race hard to do. The latest entertainer to step into this spotlight is Randy Newman, whose new album, Harps and Angels, includes an uproarious song titled “Korean Parents.”

The song will probably not prompt boycotts the way Ice Cube’s “Black Korea” did months before the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Nor will it lead to confrontations with activists like those that Sarah Silverman faced in 2000 after telling Conan O’Brien that her friend advised her to avoid jury duty by writing, “I hate Chinks” on her form. She told O’Brien that she wrote, “I love Chinks! And who doesn’t?” If the race dialogue in this country—such as it is—has moved from culture-war rancor to lame meta-satire, perhaps that’s progress. But Newman, with “Korean Parents,” offers a more enjoyable way forward.

He has always shown a particular fondness for picking at the scabs left by America’s ongoing racial unease. Against the backdrop of Nixonland backlash, he devised a carny for 1972’s “Sail Away” who pitched slaves on a free ride across the Middle Passage. “In America you’ll get food to eat, won’t have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet,” the carny sang. “It’s great to be an American.”

Read it all here…

posted by @ 6:50 am | 0 Comments

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Vibe.com@RNC :: Day 0: Storm Clouds

History could be made this week, but not the kind that Republicans were planning for.

With Hurricane Gustav steaming into the Gulf Coast and likely to make landfall Monday afternoon, and the threat of flooding extending from Texas to Mississippi, the party’s presidential nominee John McCain said today that the first day of the Republican Convention will be all but cancelled.

“This is a time when we have to do away with our party politics and we have to act as Americans,” he said.

Speeches that were expected from President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and First Lady Laura Bush have all been scrapped. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had previously announced he would not be attending because the state is now over two months past its budget deadline.

Instead the party will quietly conduct its internal business beginning at 3pm, roughly the time Hurricane Gustav is expected to hit land, and will adjourn before 5:30pm.

God forbid Gustav should cause storm surges that might lead to the re-flooding of New Orleans, but if it does, Republicans will have difficult decisions on how to present themselves during their convention week.

Earlier reports suggested that the convention could be turned into a telethon for storm victims. McCain has also been highly critical of the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. In fact, some argue that hurricane politics has played into McCain’s hands, by removing the long shadow made by W. and Cheney.

On the other hand, McCain may win support if he is able to demonstrate a deft and sympathetic hand around this unprecedented confluence of events.

Whatever the case may be, McCain has sounded the right note as Gustav bears down on the Gulf Coast. Party politics are never more important than saving and restoring lives.

Our prayers go out to all the residents of the Gulf Coast for safety and strength.

posted by @ 4:30 pm | 0 Comments

Friday, August 29th, 2008

Vibe.com@DNC :: Day 4: The Mirror

Yesterday, the Democrats worked hard to link Barack Obama’s speech to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the 1963 March on Washington.

On the floor near to the stage, the delegation from Minnesota roared when the Reverend Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “This is one of our nation’s greatest defining moments.”

It was impossible to be at Mile High Stadium yesterday and not be struck by how much the Democratic Party has changed, even from 4 years ago.

A quarter of the 4,400 Democratic delegates in town this week were African American. In fact, the Minnesota delegation seemed a mirror to the future. Fifty of the 80 elected delegates were of color. The median age of that state’s delegation seemed to have dropped by a decade in the last four years.

As Will.I.Am prepared to take the stage with John Legend, he had his own analogy in mind. “Obama is probably the first mirror of America,” he said. “The presidents that we have had before have been portraits, painted a long time ago.”

The massive crowd of 85,000—invited in to celebrate Obama’s nomination—looked even more diverse than the one at an average Denver Broncos game.

Seats in the house were certainly much more difficult to land than tickets to a Broncos game. But people were motivated.

Aaron Johnson, a 37-year old animator from Ontario, California, had shown up with his family and friends in Denver without seats. But after a contact came through, he rounded up the crew to get to Mile High 7 hours before Obama took the stage. They avoided the mile-long lines that characterized the afternoon for most attendees who hadn’t yet starred in a hit Hollywood movie.

His seats seemed a mile high from the portico-style dais, which he couldn’t see. He had all the hot summer sunshine he might have wanted, and a great view of the back of the stage. But he wouldn’t have missed the moment. “We were gonna go whether we got tickets or not,” he said.

He looked on the bright side, “You can see the city from up above.”

Sitting nearby in section 538—”Upper Northeast”, the ticket read—sat Mavis Brooks and her 16 year-old niece Lashay, from Chesapeake, Virginia. Mavis bought her airline tickets and hotel reservations to Denver in January, long before it seemed like her candidate was going to secure the nomination. She failed to land Virginia “community credentials”, but she was determined to go anyway.

And so there she was, after a lot of footwork, sitting in the heat high atop Mile High. “We had faith and we had hope, so that’s what we came out here with,” she said. “There’s a lot of people out here just like me.”

+++++

Not long after Obama’s speech, the celebrations began. And even the celebrations looked different.

On one side of town, The Cool Kids and The Clipse—The Clipse?!!—rocked a Democrats’ party. On the other, Will.I.Am’s star-studded “Yes We Can” party, first-time delegate Anton Gunn marveled at how far hip-hop had come. He had screamed himself hoarse on Tuesday at a show featuring Slick Rick, UTFO, and Whodini.

How could he have even imagined this night back in those Fresh Fest days?

Gunn was leaving early the next morning back to South Carolina to get back to work: he’s an African American candidate in a close race for a seat in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Onstage, another of his heroes, Biz Markie had stepped up to the mic as a familiar beat dropped.

“O-bama, you!” the Biz sang. You got what I ne-eeed!”

And the whole crowd joined right in.

posted by @ 9:32 am | 0 Comments



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