http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/11/stream

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/11/pulitzer_winning_author_alice_walker_o

November 11, 2008

Pulitzer-Winning Author Alice Walker on Obama’s First White House Visit as President-Elect

AMY GOODMAN: Alice, I wanted to get a comment from you on another person who has responded to the election of Barack Obama. We’re going behind bars right now to Pennsylvania. SCI Green is where the death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal shared these thoughts.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: The meanings of victory. The count has been called, and Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. has become the forty-fourth president of United States of America. But in truth, history will record him as number one, the first African American president. It is undeniable that this is a singular political achievement, a work of impressive political skill, and, we must admit, a gift of the political gods.

Among friends, in the privacy of a prison visiting room, I’ve often made the following half-joke: Obama wins handsomely, and in his acceptance speech, flush with victory, loaded with political capital, he would open by saying, “My fellow Americans, first and foremost, I want to thank the one person who made my election possible, if not inevitable: George W. Bush.” I always get a laugh, for, like all good jokes, the truth makes it happen. And the truth is, without the blunders of Bush, Obama would have been an also-ran. His fundamental issue, what set him apart from the rest of the Democratic pack, was his early opposition to the Iraq war. That gave him a wind that carried him far and long beyond his competitors, who were, for the most part, half-hearted war supporters, or worse, people who supported the war only because to not do so would have harmed their political careers. Or so they thought. That wind has carried him to the Oval Office, the grandest prize in US politics.

But what does it mean? We cannot deny its symbolic value. In millions of black homes, his picture will be placed on walls beside Martin, John F. Kennedy and a pale painting of Jesus. I bet that quite a few African homes, especially in Kenya, will also boast his smiling visage. But beyond symbol is substance. And substantively, some scholars have defined Obama as little different from his predecessors. Yet symbols are powerful things. Sometimes they have a life all their own. They may come to mean something more than first intended. History has been made. We shall see what kind of history it will be.

From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

AMY GOODMAN: That commentary and others at prisonradio.org. Alice Walker, your thoughts on Mumia Abu-Jamal’s comments and Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row, talking about a president who is not fully opposed to the death penalty?

ALICE WALKER: As usual, Mumia has such a clear understanding of what is happening, no matter where it is, which is remarkable because he is on death row. And I think he’s largely right. I think it’s up to us to do as Vincent was saying, to do the surrounding of our leader in such a way that he understands our will, what it is that we want.

In fact, when I think of Obama leading us, I think that we elected someone who can actually have the humility to follow us, which is to say that the world is turning away from militarism. We’re sick of it. We are absolutely sick of starving children, raped women, abused populations. We are totally disgusted. And we have the power, really, to say, “No more.” What we need is someone at the helm who can understand that if he’s going in the wrong direction, we will turn the boat around. I mean, this is what will happen. The world, as I feel it intuitively, wants desperately to go in a completely different direction. And we hope that he will be able to, you know, take us there, be there with us.

But we should determine, ask the people of the planet to get there, you know, whether—no matter who is with us, because we actually have that power. And we are so connected now that it is really, I think, clear to most of the people on earth how we feel and that we are all human. There were years and years and years, of course, when people thought, well, those people over there on that continent are not quite human, so, you know, it doesn’t matter what happens. Now we know that we’re all the same and that we’re actually all one and that the planet is in such terrible shape that we have to work together to save it. So all of these things mean, I think, that we’re going on. We are against war. We have had it. And we hope that all of our leaders will follow us into peace

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