Barack Obama: The Dream Deferred

Published in Issue 521 of The Black Commentator on June 20, 2013
By Larry Pinkney

A Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

“To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal.”
–Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

Everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and throughout the world have legitimate needs and aspirations.

Many ordinary people in the U.S., in the year 2008, had been led to believe that they had at last found, in the person of the then ‘hope and change’ U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, a true champion on behalf of struggling everyday people. Sadly, they had been callously duped and deceived by a corrupt corporate-owned political system intent upon continuing its agenda of economic exploitation, corporate hegemony, and perpetual war.

It is now the year 2013, and the articulate corporate-owned Barack Obama has proven to be the bane of everyday ordinary people. He is this nation’s first president to officially have his very own secret extrajudicial ‘kill list.’ He has, in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and international law, facilitated the military bombing of Libya, north Africa even as he militarizes other parts of the African continent under the auspices of what is known as AFRICOM. He has used, and continues to use, monstrous and incessant drone missile strikes to bomb the nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, etc. He has prosecuted more whistle-blowers than all of his White House predecessors combined. He has ushered in a de facto U.S. police state by signing and codifying into law – the indefinite detention (without charge, trial, jury, or due process) of U.S. citizens – as it relates specifically to provision 1021 of the so-called National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). However, not satisfied with these outrages, he oversees the most massive spying police-state surveillance program against U.S. citizens in the history of this nation.

Barack Obama, who began as the wrongly perceived hope of the people – has proven himself to be the war mongering rope of the people.

Virtually NOTHING that Mr. ‘hope and change’ Barack Obama states or has stated can be believed – NOTHING! He has betrayed, and is betraying, the everyday ordinary people of this nation and planet. For example, while calling for ‘gun control’ at home he commits mass murder of children, women, and men abroad. His hypocrisy is surpassed only by his arrogance towards, and contempt for, the ordinary people of this nation and world.

Of course, the corporate-stream media continues to play a most insidious role in the dissemination of disinformation and misinformation – that plays into the hands of the corporate-owned systemic Democrats and Republicans. Barack Obama and his Democrat and Republican party cohorts are about the business of betrayal and deferring the “dream” [i.e. the legitimate needs and aspirations] of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people.

In this year of 2013, it is clear that Barack Obama is, for everyday people, the dream deferred He is the very antithesis of ‘hope and change’ and is, in reality, the nightmare of the people.

The dreams of the ordinary people will only be brought to fruition collectively by the consciousness, hard work, and perseverance of we the people – ourselves.

Let us remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward…!

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)