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May 21, 2013
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 A Long Train RidePosted on Jan 20, 2009By Amy Goodman It started with a train ride. Barack Obama rode to Washington, D.C., for his presidential inauguration on a whistle-stop tour. “To the children who hear the whistle of the train and dream of a better life—that’s who we’re fighting for,” Obama said along the tour, which was compared to the train ride taken by Abraham Lincoln from Springfield, Ill., to Washington, D.C., in February 1861, en route to his first inauguration. The comparisons between Obama and Lincoln abound, describing the arc between the abolition of slavery in the United States and the election of the first African-American president. The train holds a deeper symbolism, though, that undergirds Obama’s historic ascension to the White House, harking back to the civil rights struggle, reflecting the unprecedented grass-roots activism that formed the core of the Obama campaign and laying out where the nation under the Obama administration might go. A. Philip Randolph was a legendary labor organizer and civil rights leader. He organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the men who tended to the overnight guests on the sleeper cars that Pullman built. While the porter positions were better-paying than many jobs available to African-Americans at the time, there were still injustices and indignities. The common practice, for example, was to call the porters “George,” regardless of their real name, after the owner of the company, George Pullman. Thousands of porters sought improvements through collective bargaining. (Ironically, after Pullman’s death in 1897, the Pullman Co. was run by Abe Lincoln’s only surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln, until the mid-1920s.) Randolph’s organizing struggle took 12 years, starting in 1925 and going through the economic collapse of 1929 and into the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. Harry Belafonte recalled in an interview with Tavis Smiley recently a story he was told by Eleanor Roosevelt. She related a public event when her husband, FDR, introduced A. Philip Randolph and asked him, Belafonte recalled, “what he thought of the nation, what he thought of the plight of the Negro people and what did he think ... where the nation was headed.” Continuing the story, Belafonte recounted what FDR replied upon hearing Randolph’s remarks: “You know, Mr. Randolph, I’ve heard everything you’ve said tonight, and I couldn’t agree with you more. I agree with everything that you’ve said, including my capacity to be able to right many of these wrongs and to use my power and the bully pulpit. ... But I would ask one thing of you, Mr. Randolph, and that is go out and make me do it.” This story was retold by Barack Obama at a campaign fundraiser in Montclair, N.J., more than a year ago. It was in response to a person asking Obama about finding a just solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict. After recounting the Randolph story, Obama said he was just one person, that he couldn’t do it alone. Obama’s final answer: “Make me do it.” Advertisement After settling the Pullman labor struggle, Randolph continued on. He challenged FDR, by beginning to organize a march on Washington set for 1941, to desegregate the military and to ensure that the economic activity around the war effort was equally available to African-Americans. FDR issued an executive order, and later, President Harry S. Truman desegregated the military. Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. organized the 1963 March on Washington, which itself has served as a strong symbolic backdrop to Obama’s victory. This historic weekend also coincides with Dr. King’s birthday. If King had survived, he would have just turned 80 years old. As Obama begins his first week as president, some might caution that it’s only fair to wait and see what he might do. But the peace group Code Pink is not waiting. Along the inaugural parade route, they were handing out thousands of pink ribbons, encouraging people to join them in holding President Obama to his campaign peace promises: end the war in Iraq; shut down Guantanamo; reject the Military Commissions Act; stop torture; work to eliminate nuclear weapons; hold direct, unconditional talks with Iran; and abide by Senate-approved international treaties. Just follow Obama’s own advice: Make him do it.
© 2009 Amy Goodman Distributed by King Features Syndicate  TAGS:
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By eileen fleming, January 21, 2009 at 7:37 am Link to this comment
How about YOU do something Amy to rectify your failure to report on Vanunu’s Freedom of Speech conviction?
We had lunch April 2007 and I filled you in that your 2004 interview with Vanunu was major testimony against him.
You didn’t call V until AFTER the 6 month sentence came down.
PLEASE REPORT on Vanunu’s FREEDOM OF SPEECH Supreme Court Appeal BEFORE it happens.
Details, 2005, 2006, 2008 video of Vanunu freely streaming @
VANUNU ARCHIVES:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=660&Itemid=175
“For 18 years in prison I felt like a man at a train station, waiting for my train. I lived in a six by nine foot space without a window for 18 years. Every day I would get up, get dressed, put on my shoes, look at the same four walls and wait for that train that never came…Now I live in a nine by nine space with four walls, I have a window to the Mount of Olives and the street. But, I live like a tourist without even a TV in a cheap hotel and all I want to do is leave Jerusalem. I am no longer waiting for a train. Now I am at the airport terminal waiting for my plane.”-Vanunu, Feb 2008
Report thisBy Lee Driver, January 21, 2009 at 7:20 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The prole is no prole at all. He’s a fake. He intomes the very chronic cynicism JonD makes mention of. Prole has no concept of what ‘make me do it’ even means. For example, how would we bring prole along, actually do the things that would ‘make’ him change his mind, he who already condemns and sneers at programs that are yet to be thought of, yet to be tried? Whatever it is that we the people can do to make Obama ‘do it,’ whatever that it is, won’t work on prole. He’s already got his feet set to be dragged kicking and screaming.
Report thisBy JonD, January 21, 2009 at 5:51 am Link to this comment
I hope with the advent of the Obama Presidency and hoped for subsequent change that the era of seething cynicism may at least be tempered. He hasn’t even begun yet and already there are those who are saying he hasn’t done enough parsing every word just to prove that he can’t possibly live up to their perfect agenda to ultimately fix everything that they view is wrong with the country and by extention the world.
Make me do it refers to motivation. It means go out do what you can, not just bitch about it, and see how far you can take it, see how much attention you can bring to your cause. build consensus coalitions, show that it means enough and is a worthy enough cause to warrant your sacrifice and attention first.
One person can not do it all, even if he or she is President. The office provides leadership, direction and sets the tone to move people and get things done. It’s unfortunate, but currently one can not get elected without campaigning and all that goes with that. At this point none of us know what President Obama will acomplish or not, but it is people that have chronic cynisism that will always be the ones who stand in the way and ignore what has taken place and those who came before and sacrificed much to bring us to this point, while the rest of us understand that something positive and historic has taken place, with this election.
Report thisBy dsmith, January 21, 2009 at 5:42 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
John J. Mearsheimer, one half of the team who exposed the Israeli Lobby, without much fanfare from the media, recently wrote and article that was featured on Anti-war.com. In the article, Another War, Another Defeat he tells how the thugish Israelis planned the attacks on Gaza to coincide with Israeli elections. In other words, the 1000 plus dead Palestinian children were killed to increase poll numbers. Nice folks!
Don’t look for any change in US middle east policy. Obama, whom I currently support, has surrounded himself with Israeli-Firsters such as Rahm Emmanuel and Dennis Ross, just to name a few.
I say God bless the Palestinians beacause the cards are already stacked against them for the next four years.
Report thisBy prole, January 21, 2009 at 2:12 am Link to this comment
“To the children who hear the whistle of the train and dream of a better life”— keep on dreaming. “The comparisons between Obama and Lincoln” abound only in the overactive imaginations of media publicists striving to grind out their next column, straining the metaphorical “arc between the abolition of slavery in the United States and the election of” corporate Uncle Tom Obama, who has no intention of abolishing wage slavery today. “The train holds a deeper symbolism, though, that undergirds Obama’s historic ascension to the White House, harking back to the” Gilded Age and the Robber Barons, the same type of constituency in their contemporary guise that Obama now slavishly serves. “George” Obama has more in common with the corporate interests of Robert Todd Lincoln than he does with the universal justice interests of Abraham Lincoln. About the only other Lincoln evocation in Obama Copacabana is that he illustrates perfectly, Honest Abe’s famous dictum that “you can fool some of the people all of the time”. If “Barack Obama at a campaign fundraiser in Montclair, N.J., more than a year ago. [said] in response to a person asking [him] about finding a just solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict [and] After recounting the Randolph story, Obama said he was just one person, that he couldn’t do it alone [then] Obama’s final answer: ‘Make me do it’.” was revealing. It’s all too typical of Obama’s cunning evasiveness. Obama would never dream of doing anything on principle, because it’s the right thing to do - only if some one makes him, or bribes him in one fashion or another. The ultimate opportunist. When Obama addressed the AIPAC convention last June, in a key fundraising event, he didn’t hesitate to pledge unswerving support to the outlaw Jewish state, he didn’t balk, ‘make me do it’. When he pledged to increase military aid to the zionist state over the next ten years, he didn’t object, ‘make me do it’. When he declared his support for Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel he didn’t demur, ‘make me do it’. While Gaza is being ravaged (it’s not over) without his condemnation he didn’t whisper, ‘don’t make me do it’. No one in the Israel camp had to make him do anything, he was only too willing to oblige whenever they snap their fingers. This self-seeking president of African descent has new masters to serve. What would Lincoln have done? Would he have stood by silently while Gaza was ravaged? Would he have gone to the AIPAC convention and groveled at their feet for campaign money? Would he have looked at Palestine suffering under forty years of inhuman Zionazi occupation, pleading for emancipation and sneer, ‘make me do it!’? “As Obama begins his first week as president, some” like Amy Goodman “might caution that it’s only fair to wait and see what he might do” But why bother, it’s already plain enough, if he had a shred of personal integrity he would do what was right without taunting, “Make me do it!” Follow his advice maybe, but don’t follow his example.
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