President Barack Obama. The first Black president. Leader of the so-called free world. You could still see him triumphantly approaching the podium in Washington that day in 2008 before a sea of arms and waving flags. As he now leaves office the country has fallen into endless lamentation.
The Decolonizer says: stop D*** riding Obama.
We had ourselves a Black president. And it was great, unprecedented, a moment in United States history. It was a blue and red 2008 election button with the word "change” in bold white letters.
The conservatives cringed. The liberals clamored, their hearts raised joyfully to the new sovereign as if to say: "Obama is in office for our sins.” Couldn’t wait to tell the good news to their Black friends: "racism is a thing of the past, we have a Black president!” They could barely keep themselves from salivating.
Meanwhile, a black woman digs in between the sofa cushions of a run-down home in Chicago trying to come up with the money to bury her son. Said she was looking for change.
The Obama years saw the extra judicial killings of so many Black people that the #BlackLivesMatter movement was created in response. The largest Black outcry in recent memory was made a national movement because a Black president sat in the White House unable to challenging anti-Black state violence.
Who could forget that fateful night in November when Officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for murdering Mike Brown? When the riots begin Obama’s face appears on a TV screen. Live on public television he says: "no one needs to be policed more than poor communities with high crime rates.”
During the Baltimore riots, Obama proceeded to wag his finger at angry protesters saying "there is no excuse for violence in Baltimore.” Never once has he taken administrative action to bring extra judicial killings to justice. He has said “Trayvon Martin could have been me” but never once has he openly acknowledged India Clarke, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd or any of the Black cis and trans women who have been killed by state violence.
Then there is Obama’s immigration policy. He is responsible for the aggressive forced removal of thousands undocumented immigrants. Through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids he is responsible for the state terror and virtual assault on migrant families. The Obama administration escalated the ICE raids at the beginning of this year, targeting Central American immigrants mostly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
The United States is willing to exploit these countries for produce, labor, drug trafficking, and is willing to install puppet governments, but is unwilling to accept migrants who cross its boarders to escape the conditions the United States has helped to create. Lives are placed in jeopardy when immigrants are sent back to these countries because of the ongoing violence that occurs there.
ICE raids have been conducted inhumanely, often in the early hours of the morning, where people are taken into custody and thrown into the deplorable immigration detention centers.
How many people of color has Obama killed?
Then there is Obama’s foreign policy. The Obama years saw the rise of drone warfare; the buzzing death machines that hover over arbitrary "hot spots” in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Waziristan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen, killing supposed terrorist leaders on Washington’s secret "kill list.” The Obama Administration was directly responsible for the tenfold increase in drone activity during Obama’s presidency. Obama himself was directly responsible for overseeing the drone program.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism over 400 reported drone strikes have occurred as of 2014. It is estimated that U.S drones have killed at least two thousand people; most of them were people of color. Most of them were innocent civilians. In 2013, Obama defended the program by saying that strikes were as a last resort and as "precise” as possible. Leaked documents on the program proved that this was a lie. 90% of the people killed by drone strikes are innocent civilians. Apparently the lives of brown people are extinguishable.
The Obama administration constantly preferred extermination over capture during covert counter-terrorist operations. Obama has developed "kill teams,” special military units formed for the purpose of assassinating CIA terrorist targets. Obama has taken liberties to target and execute anyone who poses a national security threat in the Middle East. The most famous kill team mission of course was the assassination of Osama bin Laden, who Obama never fails to gloat shamelessly about during public discussions of his foreign policy.
Obama: keeping the world safe for United States colonial domination.
This past January Obama made his final State of the Union Address.
It was an address oozing with United States exceptionalism. It played up bipartisan conflict instead speaking frankly about the racial situation. Obama affirmed U.S leadership of the world aggressively and with the up most barbarism. It was an address that utterly ignored the horrors of his administration, all the bloody mangled bodies floating in the background of his presidency.
F*** Obama!
They say that he was a litmus test. That he was the president that America had been waiting for. He was the symbol that people of color had made it to the mountain top. Conditions for people of color in America have scarcely improved since Obama took office. The expression "I have a Black president" has lost its meaning.
Obama's change could not save us. It could not save Sandra Bland or Michael Brown. It could not save the families from the added grief of knowing that no justice will be served.
Obama teaches us that, so long as the United States is an illegitimate country founded on the genocide of Indigenous people, the forced slave labor of Africans, the cheap labor of migrant workers, the domestic labor of women, the exploitation of the poor, the neo-colonial imperialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it's leader is by default an accessory of global white supremacy, capitalism, settler colonialism, and white supremacist patriarchy. The operation of this country requires the global destruction of people of color. It does not matter what complexion you are or how far left on the liberal spectrum you fall. If you are president you will carry out this requirement.
This is Obama's Legacy.
The Decolonizer says: stop D*** riding Obama.
We had ourselves a Black president. And it was great, unprecedented, a moment in United States history. It was a blue and red 2008 election button with the word "change” in bold white letters.
The conservatives cringed. The liberals clamored, their hearts raised joyfully to the new sovereign as if to say: "Obama is in office for our sins.” Couldn’t wait to tell the good news to their Black friends: "racism is a thing of the past, we have a Black president!” They could barely keep themselves from salivating.
Meanwhile, a black woman digs in between the sofa cushions of a run-down home in Chicago trying to come up with the money to bury her son. Said she was looking for change.
The Obama years saw the extra judicial killings of so many Black people that the #BlackLivesMatter movement was created in response. The largest Black outcry in recent memory was made a national movement because a Black president sat in the White House unable to challenging anti-Black state violence.
Who could forget that fateful night in November when Officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for murdering Mike Brown? When the riots begin Obama’s face appears on a TV screen. Live on public television he says: "no one needs to be policed more than poor communities with high crime rates.”
During the Baltimore riots, Obama proceeded to wag his finger at angry protesters saying "there is no excuse for violence in Baltimore.” Never once has he taken administrative action to bring extra judicial killings to justice. He has said “Trayvon Martin could have been me” but never once has he openly acknowledged India Clarke, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd or any of the Black cis and trans women who have been killed by state violence.
Then there is Obama’s immigration policy. He is responsible for the aggressive forced removal of thousands undocumented immigrants. Through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids he is responsible for the state terror and virtual assault on migrant families. The Obama administration escalated the ICE raids at the beginning of this year, targeting Central American immigrants mostly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
The United States is willing to exploit these countries for produce, labor, drug trafficking, and is willing to install puppet governments, but is unwilling to accept migrants who cross its boarders to escape the conditions the United States has helped to create. Lives are placed in jeopardy when immigrants are sent back to these countries because of the ongoing violence that occurs there.
ICE raids have been conducted inhumanely, often in the early hours of the morning, where people are taken into custody and thrown into the deplorable immigration detention centers.
How many people of color has Obama killed?
Then there is Obama’s foreign policy. The Obama years saw the rise of drone warfare; the buzzing death machines that hover over arbitrary "hot spots” in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Waziristan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen, killing supposed terrorist leaders on Washington’s secret "kill list.” The Obama Administration was directly responsible for the tenfold increase in drone activity during Obama’s presidency. Obama himself was directly responsible for overseeing the drone program.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism over 400 reported drone strikes have occurred as of 2014. It is estimated that U.S drones have killed at least two thousand people; most of them were people of color. Most of them were innocent civilians. In 2013, Obama defended the program by saying that strikes were as a last resort and as "precise” as possible. Leaked documents on the program proved that this was a lie. 90% of the people killed by drone strikes are innocent civilians. Apparently the lives of brown people are extinguishable.
The Obama administration constantly preferred extermination over capture during covert counter-terrorist operations. Obama has developed "kill teams,” special military units formed for the purpose of assassinating CIA terrorist targets. Obama has taken liberties to target and execute anyone who poses a national security threat in the Middle East. The most famous kill team mission of course was the assassination of Osama bin Laden, who Obama never fails to gloat shamelessly about during public discussions of his foreign policy.
Obama: keeping the world safe for United States colonial domination.
This past January Obama made his final State of the Union Address.
It was an address oozing with United States exceptionalism. It played up bipartisan conflict instead speaking frankly about the racial situation. Obama affirmed U.S leadership of the world aggressively and with the up most barbarism. It was an address that utterly ignored the horrors of his administration, all the bloody mangled bodies floating in the background of his presidency.
F*** Obama!
They say that he was a litmus test. That he was the president that America had been waiting for. He was the symbol that people of color had made it to the mountain top. Conditions for people of color in America have scarcely improved since Obama took office. The expression "I have a Black president" has lost its meaning.
Obama's change could not save us. It could not save Sandra Bland or Michael Brown. It could not save the families from the added grief of knowing that no justice will be served.
Obama teaches us that, so long as the United States is an illegitimate country founded on the genocide of Indigenous people, the forced slave labor of Africans, the cheap labor of migrant workers, the domestic labor of women, the exploitation of the poor, the neo-colonial imperialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it's leader is by default an accessory of global white supremacy, capitalism, settler colonialism, and white supremacist patriarchy. The operation of this country requires the global destruction of people of color. It does not matter what complexion you are or how far left on the liberal spectrum you fall. If you are president you will carry out this requirement.
This is Obama's Legacy.
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