Nice Smile ~~ Beau sourire ~~ basma 7elwa
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Barack and Michelle Obama applaud supporters at primary night headquarters in Nashua, January 8, 2008. (Tracy Lee Carroll, NHPR)
Strengthening America Overseas, Ending the Iraq War, Cleaning Up Washington's Culture of Corruption, Meeting America's Energy Needs, Honoring Our Veterans, Improving Our Schools, Creating a Healthcare System that Works, Protecting Our Homeland, Strengthening Families and Communities, Protecting the Right to Vote, Reconciling Faith and Politics... Senator Obama has been able to develop innovative approaches to challenge the status quo and get results. Americans are tired of divisive ideological politics, which is why Senator Obama has reached out to Republicans to find areas of common ground. He has tried to break partisan logjams and take on seemingly intractable problems. During his tenure in Washington and in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has accumulated a record of bipartisan success…
Qui oggi piove,
governo ladro
speriamo negli Stati Uniti ---
Da guardare allontanandosi dallo schermo, solo un pò, ehi tu non nell'altra stanza :-)
This is not a bitter crop: The only 'Strange Fruit' we have in America's trees tonight are our bicycles. We've hung them there while we celebrate because our city's bike racks are full.
The First Family of the United States Of America.
Barack H. Obama elected President of the USA on 4 November 2008. Will take the
office of PRESIDENT on 20 January 2009.
God bless you Mr. President!
Invesco Field, Denver, CO (horiz.)
08/28/2008
30x40 Digital C-Print
Edition of 5 - $600
This editioned print is included in So Help Me, an exhibition of photography, audio and video from the 2008 Presidential Campaign at Opal Gallery in Atlanta, GA, in Nov. 2008.
Sen. Barack Obama was greeted by the largest crowd of his 15-month campaign in Portland Sunday, an estimated 75,000 people, according to Portland Police.
Democratic Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama and his family on election night in Chicago, IL on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. (David Katz/Obama for America)
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama chats with veterans while campaigning at Washington & Jefferson College for the Democratic nomination for president in Pennsylvania.
Thirsty Eye Exhibit/208 Gallery, Albuquerque
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/barac...
Democratic Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama and his family on election night in Chicago, IL on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. (David Katz/Obama for America)
President-Elect Barack Obama
11/21/08 - Now available as a limited edition print here: www.stephenvoss.com/blog/2008/11/barack-obama-print-sale....
© Ben Heine || Facebook || Twitter || www.benheine.com
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This is a traditional watercolor painting I made
a long time before Barack Obama got elected
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For more information about my art: info@benheine.com
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Obama is the change that America has tried to hide
Only one candidate offers the radical departure for the 21st century the US needs, for its own sake and the rest of the world's
By Alice Walker
I have come home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.
When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would.
My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May. They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof, ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style.
We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the dairy cows herself.
When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that "Jane" and "Dick" had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter.
The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.
When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free.
I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo. Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not.
I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.
When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves.
True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth's people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth.
I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq.
I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?
It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.
I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.
And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States. My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama. I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces' case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most North American families – and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American genes – we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it.
When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States. We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old white women and men who do.
Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door. The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.
We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for.
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This article appeared on www.guardian.co.uk/
With just a couple days away from US President-elect Obama's inauguration, he is already facing monumental issues which need to be dealt with. Wars, the environment, the economy.
Amidst all these, it's not surprising that his inaugural speech will open with "oh, bummer..."
But until then, we can't fault him if he just for a few minutes, sit back on an empty bench, eat chinese congee and contemplate on the tasks ahead.
Former US President Barack Obama, onboard N650EH (G650ER) GLF6 SYD-HND passing 'Sheps Mound' for a 34L Sydney Airport (SYD/YSSY) Departure for Haneda (HND/RJTT) earlier today... In town for an 'Invitation Only' address at the Art Gallery of NSW which touched on the importance of young people and women.
President Obama and company depart San Francisco for the next stop on their latest fundraising tour.
... new beginnings, rites of passage, of change. To the 44th (interesting number isn't it) President of the United States on his Inauguration.
Even if you don't prefer Barack Obama, I think you can agree that his logo is brilliant. I found this image online and simply added a mat and frame.
I urge all my American Flickr friends to go vote if you haven't already (I have). If you're still undecided, before you go to the polls, please read his policy statements. If you are someone who wants Obama to win, please don't let his lead in the polls make you think it's okay to stay home and not vote. It's not. The election might still be very close, and your vote will make a difference.
In addition to admiring his intellect, eloquence and already great accomplishments, I am confident that in beginning to solve the multitudinous problems this current administration is leaving behind, Obama will gather the best minds of the nation for consultation and advice and then synthesize those views into a plan of action that will heal America and restore its place in the world as the beacon of freedom and democracy it had always been. He will close Guantanamo and declare the end of torture of prisoners. While still protecting us from harm, he will move to amend the Patriot Act to return freedoms to Americans that have been wrested away. He will responsibly turn Iraq over to the Iraqis, freeing up almost $20 billion a month, and move some more of our forces to Afghanistan to combat the resurgence there of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and to find Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, while still pursuing cooperation from our allies. He will prefer diplomacy to a show of force in confronting the challenges we face around the world. He will try to control the spread of "loose nukes." He will see that our troops have the protections they need and will make sure they are honored for their service by ensuring they get the care they need when they return home. He will assure our young people that in return for service to America, they can go to college for four years. He will give 95% of working Americans tax breaks and take some breaks away from those wealthy people who did not need them in the first place. He will reward American companies for creating jobs on our soil, millions and millions of them, by starting to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and by making America the leader in green energy. He will restore respect for science and will return America to a leadership role in combating climate change. He will fight poverty by expanding access to jobs, raising the minimum wage and supporting improvements in facilities and services in rural and urban areas. He will also see that the U.S. Department of Justice will indeed return to dispensing justice, not partisan politics, and will appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would not overturn Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose. (Even as a senior citizen, that still matters to me.) He will start reversing the mountainous debt that this administration has built up. He will ensure that trade agreements reflect respect for workers and for the environment. He will find people to staff agencies and create or reform policies that will protect our country's wildlands, wildlife and natural resources.
All of this will not come all at once (it may take years or a decade) and will not come without sacrifice on the part of all Americans, but the healing process will begin, and we will again have an inspirational leader who will discourage selfishness and call on us to be responsible citizens of our communities and of our world. We can all play a part. It can start with your vote.
Please also take a moment today, no matter whom you vote for, to think about the Obama family, who is grieving the loss of "Toot," Barack Obama's beloved grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who had "poured everything she had" into him but succumbed to cancer yesterday, just one day before this historic election. Thankfully he had a chance last week to bid her farewell and to assure her that what she did for him and his sister was meaningful and important.
President Obama chatting with Valarie, Scott, Bill, and Kathie—the four winners of Dinner with Barack—over a glass of iced-tea yesterday.
Photograph by Christopher Dilts for Obama for America.
As seen on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Barack_Obama_at_NH.jpg
More of my photos of Obama are here: www.flickr.com/photos/marcn/tags/barackobama/
Some you are free to use under a Creative Commons license if you follow the credit rule, and some are All Rights Reserved to me. Ask if you have questions.
Obama has made history!!! We have all been a part of it. To commemorate this historic event we have created some new posters based on the “New Hope” series. The new series, titled "We Made History" will have a limited run of 100 numbered prints, signed by artist Deroy Peraza, and is available in four colors.
What was funny about taking this one... The guy on the bike saw me taking the pics so kept circling the block and riding past -- over and over. We never exchanged a word or glance, but I could tell he loved being in the picture.
Guess he hoped this would show up somewhere cool and give him his well-deserved 15 minutes of fame. ;-) Thanks, man!