Real Words to President Barack Obama from a Brother

Dear President Barack Obama:

 BE the change you want (or claim to want) to see in America and world! And stop fooling around with conservatives and corporate power. Your pragmatic centrist liberalism isn't working. Every offer of moderate compromise with Republicans conservatives is taken as a sign of weakness. They and cowardly Democrats will sink the progressive potential of your administration. YOu have poltical capital and the support of most Americans--even most of the world! YOu don't need the right.

Tell them to either get on board or get lost! Restore our beleaguered civil liberties. Establish single payer national health care. And end corporate domination of our health care system and education. Death to corporate power! Strengthen the bargaining position of democratic unions--expressing the same solidarity you did this past December on behalf of Chicago's Windows and Doors workers.

Defend workers right to organize Fight for the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures. And end American militarism and imperialism. Either that or our militarism and imperialism will be a blade in the throat of democracy. Fight corporate power. Fight the big lobbies. Even if you do not win all these battles you inspire others, and save your own honor and reputation as a progressive poltical leader. Stop appeaing the REpublicans and cowardly Democratic timeservers.

Your memoir DREAMS FROM MY FATHER clearly reveals your progressive sentiments and commitments as a student and young community organizer. Draw upon that tradition--YOUR tradition, and ours. And if you wish to continue invoking the memory of Dr. King (as you did at your inauguration and election victory speech) then take his EXAMPLE as well, at least as much as one can while operating in this political system. Strive to BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD!

 -Savant

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Dear President Obama:

 What need have you of these endless efforts to extend the olive branch to the Right? It has never worked. It didn't work when Abe Lincoln, one of the few PROGRESSIVE Republicans, sought to compromise with the slaveholding tyrants of the Confederacy in the name of national unity. A war still had to be fought to save the Republic and end the monstrous system of slavery. Compromise didn't work when Franklin D. Roosevelt, a moderately progressive Democrat, tried to end the Depression and extend certain economic rights to working people and the poor. The Republicans and right wing Dixiecrats opposed him all the way. They opposed the Civil Rights movement.

The Republicans opposed Medicare, which their cartoonish leader Ronald Reagan tried to depict as the first step toward Stalinist America. Mr. President you proposed a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures--a reasonable measure in this economic crisis. But it was undermined by both Republicans and Democrats, either from lack or courage or being bought off by the mortgage companies. You should have fought for it PUBLICLY, appealing to the citizenry which is already in support of you!

Even if you didn't win, you would have sensitized the public, and actually ENLARGED your moral and political capital. Some of the Republicans have even REFUSED to accept money from the stimulus package--NOT in toto--but only those funds for the RELIEF of the UNEMPLOYED! Money for corporate power and their own purses is ok. It is only the COMMON PEOPLE who interests do not concern the Right. Moreover, YOU made a big mistake in not including supporters of SINGLE PAYER health care in your plans and discussions to overhaul the system. That is a grievous error for which YOU must assume responsibility.

President Barack Obama: the less you get done or at least FIGHT FOR before the midterm the election, the less you will be able to do in the future. Inspiring talk about progressive change is all well and good in the beginning. But the time for talk alone has passed. Be about the change you fought for as student actvist, as aa progressive community organizer and ally of Harold Washington and the Saul Alinksy tradition of community organizing. BE the change you have come to symbolize. Either that, or go down in history as a discredited symbol of an historic change that MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

-Savant