"Black President!" the first words that leave my mouth as i walk down the stairs to my apartment building. "Black President! Yes, I. Can't hold us back no more..." my neighbor chimes in, and the walk to the subway was more and more affirmation, celebration and jubilation that morning of November 5, 2008... the day after Barak Obama won the Presidential election. The morning of election day, i got up and voted at the elementary school down the street from me in Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY. The line was very long, a two hour wait til i hit the polls. But those two hours flew by, mainly because of the folks in line with me, our discussions, our excitement. Mind you, i was steadily, the one reminding folks that we had just watched two fixed presidential elections. i had spent time in other countries with obvious election tampering, Ethiopia and Kenya, and was starting to feel like democracy was never intended to be a reality that actually empowered people to choose elected officials. i'm also not delusional about politrix in the united states of america... i know that we basically live in an oligarchy, a country controlled by multi national corporations, a country that doesn't even have sovereignty of our currency... still, seeing a black man win the presidency cultivated a very powerful sense of victory. My bredren Taagen told me that some Rastas in Jamaica are calling Obama the Antichrist... some other mystics see him as a celestial being... some call him black Illuminati... or just straight up Illuminati... well... time will tell. I feel that his heart is in the right place. It felt good to me to vote for him. I feel like it's an affirmation that we are entering the renaissance. These four years leading up to 2012 have been prophesized as being the years that open the door to the golden age. the age when babylon shall fall. Who knows what monumental changes will have to happen for us to see that kind of movement of liberation, but I know we all are preparing ourselves, even if subconsciously.
So, on election day, after editing a grants video for Project Morry, an inner city youth summer camp with a year round scholastic support program, i grabbed my camera and went to four parties to document the historic night. i knew the power elite had chosen Obama to be the face of the nation during this time, knew he'd "win" the election, and really wanted to hear from my fellow Brooklyn renaissance folks what they were going through as it happened. the result is Brooklyn Obama, the video at the top of the page.
The Obamaized Fela Anikulapo Kuti image was created by Dwayne Rogers. You can get this image on a tee shirt or poster at http://www.dwaynerodgers.com/blackpresident/ and read an interview of how he came up with the idea at Okayplayer. I really love the image, one because it celebrates one of my greatest heroes, Fela Kuti, and two because it brings the revolutionary undertones to having a black president. One who will hopefully stand for Truth and Justice.
Sam Cooke is singing A Change Is Going to Come from the Ancestor realm... Let's make it happen!
