OPENINGS AND POSSIBILITIES: The Meaning of Obama
By KAZEMBE BALAGUN and HANK WILLIAMS
From Left Turn

How does the Black left engage and understand the historic presidential campaign of Barack Obama? This question is in the hearts and minds of African-American radicals around the country.

With the nomination of Barack Obama increasingly likely, there seems to be a significant block forming within the Black left community agreeing to lend a kind of “critical support” to his campaign. Activists Bill Fletcher and Danny Glover -two principal authors of the widely circulated Progressives for Obama (PFO) statement-as well as other notables such as Amiri Baraka see Obama’s candidacy as an opening to reinvigorate social movements and the see possibility of pushing him to the Left. The PFO call argues that the emerging movement, “even though it is candidate-centered…is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.”

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