Here’s 25 more jewels for you all.

50. The Songhai Empire of 16th century West Africa had a government position called Minister for Etiquette and Protocol.

51. The mediaeval Nigerian city of Benin was built to “a scale comparable with the Great Wall of China”. There was a vast system of defensive walling totalling 10,000 miles in all. Even before the full extent of the city walling had become apparent the Guinness Book of Records carried an entry in the 1974 edition that described the city as: “The largest earthworks in the world carried out prior to the mechanical era.”

52. Benin art of the Middle Ages was of the highest quality. An official of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde once stated that: “These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him . . . Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”

53. Winwood Reade described his visit to the Ashanti Royal Palace of Kumasi in 1874: “We went to the king’s palace, which consists of many courtyards, each surrounded with alcoves and verandahs, and having two gates or doors, so that each yard was a thoroughfare . . . But the part of the palace fronting the street was a stone house, Moorish in its style . . . with a flat roof and a parapet, and suites of apartments on the first floor. It was built by Fanti masons many years ago. The rooms upstairs remind me of Wardour Street. Each was a perfect Old Curiosity Shop. Books in many languages, Bohemian glass, clocks, silver plate, old furniture, Persian rugs, Kidderminster carpets, pictures and engravings, numberless chests and coffers. A sword bearing the inscription From Queen Victoria to the King of Ashantee. A copy of the Times, 17 October 1843. With these were many specimens of Moorish and Ashanti handicraft.”

54. In the mid-nineteenth century, William Clarke, an English visitor to Nigeria, remarked that: “As good an article of cloth can be woven by the Yoruba weavers as by any people . . . in durability, their cloths far excel the prints and home-spuns of Manchester.”

55. The recently discovered 9th century Nigerian city of Eredo was found to be surrounded by a wall that was 100 miles long and seventy feet high in places. The internal area was a staggering 400 square miles.

56. On the subject of cloth, Kongolese textiles were also distinguished. Various European writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wrote of the delicate crafts of the peoples living in eastern Kongo and adjacent regions who manufactured damasks, sarcenets, satins, taffeta, cloth of tissue and velvet. Professor DeGraft-Johnson made the curious observation that: “Their brocades, both high and low, were far more valuable than the Italian.”

57. On Kongolese metallurgy of the Middle Ages, one modern scholar wrote that: “There is no doubting . . . the existence of an expert metallurgical art in the ancient Kongo . . . The Bakongo were aware of the toxicity of lead vapours. They devised preventative and curative methods, both pharmacological (massive doses of pawpaw and palm oil) and mechanical (exerting of pressure to free the digestive tract), for combating lead poisoning.”

58. In Nigeria, the royal palace in the city of Kano dates back to the fifteenth century. Begun by Muhammad Rumfa (ruled 1463-99) it has gradually evolved over generations into a very imposing complex. A colonial report of the city from 1902, described it as “a network of buildings covering an area of 33 acres and surrounded by a wall 20 to 30 feet high outside and 15 feet inside . . . in itself no mean citadel”.

59. A sixteenth century traveller visited the central African civilisation of Kanem-Borno and commented that the emperor’s cavalry had golden “stirrups, spurs, bits and buckles.” Even the ruler’s dogs had “chains of the finest gold”.

60. One of the government positions in mediaeval Kanem-Borno was Astronomer Royal.

61. Ngazargamu, the capital city of Kanem-Borno, became one of the largest cities in the seventeenth century world. By 1658 AD, the metropolis, according to an architectural scholar housed “about quarter of a million people”. It had 660 streets. Many were wide and unbending, reflective of town planning.

62. The Nigerian city of Surame flourished in the sixteenth century. Even in ruin it was an impressive sight, built on a horizontal vertical grid. A modern scholar describes it thus: “The walls of Surame are about 10 miles in circumference and include many large bastions or walled suburbs running out at right angles to the main wall. The large compound at Kanta is still visible in the centre, with ruins of many buildings, one of which is said to have been two-storied. The striking feature of the walls and whole ruins is the extensive use of stone and tsokuwa (laterite gravel) or very hard red building mud, evidently brought from a distance. There is a big mound of this near the north gate about 8 feet in height. The walls show regular courses of masonry to a height of 20 feet and more in several places. The best preserved portion is that known as sirati (the bridge) a little north of the eastern gate . . . The main city walls here appear to have provided a very strongly guarded entrance about 30 feet wide.”

63. The Nigerian city of Kano in 1851 produced an estimated 10 million pairs of sandals and 5 million hides each year for export.

64. In 1246 AD Dunama II of Kanem-Borno exchanged embassies with Al-Mustansir, the king of Tunis. He sent the North African court a costly present, which apparently included a giraffe. An old chronicle noted that the rare animal “created a sensation in Tunis”.

65. By the third century BC the city of Carthage on the coast of Tunisia was opulent and impressive. It had a population of 700,000 and may even have approached a million. Lining both sides of three streets were rows of tall houses six storeys high.

66. The Ethiopian city of Axum has a series of 7 giant obelisks that date from perhaps 300 BC to 300 AD. They have details carved into them that represent windows and doorways of several storeys. The largest obelisk, now fallen, is in fact “the largest monolith ever made anywhere in the world”. It is 108 feet long, weighs a staggering 500 tons, and represents a thirteen-storey building.

67. Ethiopia minted its own coins over 1,500 years ago. One scholar wrote that: “Almost no other contemporary state anywhere in the world could issue in gold, a statement of sovereignty achieved only by Rome, Persia, and the Kushan kingdom in northern India at the time.”

68. The Ethiopian script of the 4th century AD influenced the writing script of Armenia. A Russian historian noted that: “Soon after its creation, the Ethiopic vocalised script began to influence the scripts of Armenia and Georgia. D. A. Olderogge suggested that Mesrop Mashtotz used the vocalised Ethiopic script when he invented the Armenian alphabet.”

69. “In the first half of the first millennium CE,” says a modern scholar, Ethiopia “was ranked as one of the world’s greatest empires”. A Persian cleric of the third century AD identified it as the third most important state in the world after Persia and Rome.

70. Ethiopia has 11 underground mediaeval churches built by being carved out of the ground. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD, Roha became the new capital of the Ethiopians. Conceived as a New Jerusalem by its founder, Emperor Lalibela (c.1150-1230), it contains 11 churches, all carved out of the rock of the mountains by hammer and chisel. All of the temples were carved to a depth of 11 metres or so below ground level. The largest is the House of the Redeemer, a staggering 33.7 metres long, 23.7 metres wide and 11.5 metres deep.

71. Lalibela is not the only place in Ethiopia to have such wonders. A cotemporary archaeologist reports research that was conducted in the region in the early 1970’s when: “startling numbers of churches built in caves or partially or completely cut from the living rock were revealed not only in Tigre and Lalibela but as far south as Addis Ababa. Soon at least 1,500 were known. At least as many more probably await revelation.”

72. In 1209 AD Emperor Lalibela of Ethiopia sent an embassy to Cairo bringing the sultan unusual gifts including an elephant, a hyena, a zebra, and a giraffe.

73. In Southern Africa, there are at least 600 stone built ruins in the regions of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. These ruins are called Mazimbabwe in Shona, the Bantu language of the builders, and means great revered house and “signifies court”.

74. The Great Zimbabwe was the largest of these ruins. It consists of 12 clusters of buildings, spread over 3 square miles. Its outer walls were made from 100,000 tons of granite bricks. In the fourteenth century, the city housed 18,000 people, comparable in size to that of London of the same period.

75. Bling culture existed in this region. At the time of our last visit, the Horniman Museum in London had exhibits of headrests with the caption: “Headrests have been used in Africa since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs. Remains of some headrests, once covered in gold foil, have been found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe and burial sites like Mapungubwe dating to the twelfth century after Christ.”

As Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and several other black luminaries gather today in Memphis to commerate the 40th Anniversary of MLK’s assassination, two of the three people still vying for the opportunity to be President will be there, but not the two you would expect. That’s because Hillary Clinton and John McCain will be marching with Al Sharpton today, but the African-American Candidate, Barack Obama, who gave a speech at King’s old church on Martin Luther King’s Birthday by the way, will not. At first I was a little bothered by that, just like when he did not attend Tavis Smiley’s “Black State of the Union” Broadcast, but after a little introspection, I said to myself, you know what? He is right not to go.

Why you ask? Well, because he would have to answer too many questions. Questions that he shouldn’t have to answer. Can you imagine what our friends at the Fox Network would do if they got a hold of some video with Barack and Al Sharpton? The Rev. Wright Marathon that they showed 24 hours a day would pale in comparison to the Al Sharpton sequel. No one holds White People’s feet to the fire more than Al, and any association between Sharpton and Obama would spark a disinformation campaign that would end up with Obama as a card-carrying member of the Black Panthers. Do you remember what people said when Farrakhan endorsed Obama? Well let me tell you, for a certain segment of the population, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are just as much the “jew-hating” “Anti-Americans” that Farrakhan is. The sad part is, that FOX network’s own Sean Hannity, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton will be there and no one will question their patriotism, or call them a racist. As a matter of fact, they will be praised for “remembering” Martin Luther King’s legacy, and “Building Bridges” with the black community. Why don’t they have to answer the same questions that Barack would if he showed up? Do you think that Barack should have gone to Memphis? Speak Out!

The results of a new CNN/Essence poll were released today,

and one of the questions that they asked was “Do you think America is ready for a Black President?” As far as I am concerned, the results were quite positive, with 76% of those polled responding in the affirmative. (That’s an increase of 14 points from a poll taken in December 2006) While this poll doesn’t give us the percentage of individuals who say they would vote for a black president themselves, a number that I would really be interested in seeing, it is good to see that more people see it as possible.

Right now, in the major presidential “On Deck” positions, which I would designate as a State Governor, U.S. Senator, or Vice-President, there are only three African-Americans, one Senator, who is Barack Obama of Illinois, and two Governors, Deval Patrick of Masschusetts, and David Paterson of New York, who gained his post via a scandal. So because we have so few people in positions that traditionally win the White House, the fact that we even have a Black candidate with a real chance to win the Presidential nomination and quite possibly the Presidency, is remarkable.

The reason I mention that, is because there is no doubt that the Obama campaign has given people a new attitude towards the prospect of a black president, even in the black community. When Barack’s campaign first began, a good amount of African-Americans would not even allow themselves to think about him winning, for fear of another letdown in a series of seemingly perpetual disappointments. However, when he won the Iowa contest, and several others following that one, people started to believe, and the possibility of what many wanted all along seemed to be more tangible. I know that an Obama in the White House would not solve all the issues of race in this country, in fact like Rep. Cleaver said, it may create new ones, but it’s something that I think we are definitely ready for, for a whole host of reasons.

pcash

I saw this on NPR’s website and thought I should share. Sometimes *especially in this day and age* it’s nice to see GOOD NEWS for a change.

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”

“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”

Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”

“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”

“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

Produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo.

Take heart, Mr. Spitzer, If Don Imus can get his job back after calling our sisters “Hoes”, then maybe you can get your job back after calling a Hoe…don’t laugh now, It could happen! Probably not as fast as it happened for Imus, but it could happen. Did you know that tomorrow will make it a year since Don Imus called the Rutgers Women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” on his radio show? Ironically, it also coincides with the 40th anniversary of the MLK assassination. At the time, it was decried as such a travesty,that he was fired by CBS, and all of his big time sponsors started dropping his show. I heard a lot of people talk about how he may never work on radio again, and the huge price that he was paying since he just signed a 10-million dollar per year contract extenstion.

But as usual it looks like the joke was on us…no sooner than Imus was fired, it seems like WABC was knocking down his door offering him a new radio contract, and Imus’ punishment amounted to no more than a eight month vacation. When it was officially announced in December that Imus was going back on the air, the WABC radio president was even quoted as saying “He is rested, fired up, and ready to do great radio.” Not too long after that, his big sponsors like Bigelow Tea and Net Jet started signing back on, taking him off the proverbial “naughty chair” and allowing him to come out and play again.

I know that people deserve a second chance, I mean hell, even that pitbull in a suit Al Sharpton said so, but I bet he didn’t expect for him to be back on the air just months later. So what did it all mean? He claims that his meeting with the Rutgers Ladies (during which he made an apology) was a “Life Changing” experience, but he also said at the time that “he was fighting for his life” since he lost his job. So did he really change in eight months? Did the attitude that allowed him to say those words and think it was funny magically disappear in that short period of time? Did his time in the “Time Out” corner, really show him the error of his ways? Maybe, but just like my two year old after time out, it’s probably only a matter of time before he gets caught with his hands in the cookie jar again…

p.cash

Just as I suspected, It looks like “President” Mugabe is not ready to give up his power, election loss or not. According to a report from the AP, Mugabe ordered a raid on the opposition party’s offices in Harare today, ransacking the hotel rooms that they were using. According to the staff at another hotel where the foreign press was staying, several members of the press were rounded up and taken away. Even though I admit that I don’t know anything about the opposition party and wether they would be any better that the current regime, I was hopeful that Zimbabwe would be able to have meaningful elections and that the wishes of the people would be respected. This crackdown however cast many doubts on that type of resolution, with the only hope being that Mugabe caves in to the pressures of the international community. Doubtful…

Part 2 in my continued effort to highlight history.

26. West Africa had walled towns and cities in the pre-colonial period. Winwood Reade, an English historian visited West Africa in the nineteenth century and commented that: “There are . . . thousands of large walled cities resembling those of Europe in the Middle Ages, or of ancient Greece.”

27. Lord Lugard, an English official, estimated in 1904 that there were 170 walled towns still in existence in the whole of just the Kano province of northern Nigeria.

28. Cheques are not quite as new an invention as we were led to believe. In the tenth century, an Arab geographer, Ibn Haukal, visited a fringe region of Ancient Ghana. Writing in 951 AD, he told of a cheque for 42,000 golden dinars written to a merchant in the city of Audoghast by his partner in Sidjilmessa.

29. Ibn Haukal, writing in 951 AD, informs us that the King of Ghana was “the richest king on the face of the earth” whose pre-eminence was due to the quantity of gold nuggets that had been amassed by the himself and by his predecessors.

30. The Nigerian city of Ile-Ife was paved in 1000 AD on the orders of a female ruler with decorations that originated in Ancient America. Naturally, no-one wants to explain how this took place approximately 500 years before the time of Christopher Columbus!

31. West Africa had bling culture in 1067 AD. One source mentions that when the Emperor of Ghana gives audience to his people: “he sits in a pavilion around which stand his horses caparisoned in cloth of gold: behind him stand ten pages holding shields and gold-mounted swords: and on his right hand are the sons of the princes of his empire, splendidly clad and with gold plaited into their hair . . . The gate of the chamber is guarded by dogs of an excellent breed . . . they wear collars of gold and silver.”

32. Glass windows existed at that time. The residence of the Ghanaian Emperor in 1116 AD was: “A well-built castle, thoroughly fortified, decorated inside with sculptures and pictures, and having glass windows.”

33. The Grand Mosque in the Malian city of Djenné, described as “the largest adobe [clay] building in the world”, was first raised in 1204 AD. It was built on a square plan where each side is 56 metres in length. It has three large towers on one side, each with projecting wooden buttresses.

34. One of the great achievements of the Yoruba was their urban culture. “By the year A.D. 1300,” says a modern scholar, “the Yoruba people built numerous walled cities surrounded by farms”. The cities were Owu, Oyo, Ijebu, Ijesa, Ketu, Popo, Egba, Sabe, Dassa, Egbado, Igbomina, the sixteen Ekiti principalities, Owo and Ondo.

35. Yoruba metal art of the mediaeval period was of world class. One scholar wrote that Yoruba art “would stand comparison with anything which Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece and Rome, or Renaissance Europe had to offer.”

36. In the Malian city of Gao stands the Mausoleum of Askia the Great, a weird sixteenth century edifice that resembles a step pyramid.

37. Thousands of mediaeval tumuli have been found across West Africa. Nearly 7,000 were discovered in north-west Senegal alone spread over nearly 1,500 sites. They were probably built between 1000 and 1300 AD.

38. Excavations at the Malian city of Gao carried out by Cambridge University revealed glass windows. One of the finds was entitled: “Fragments of alabaster window surrounds and a piece of pink window glass, Gao 10th – 14th century.”

39. In 1999 the BBC produced a television series entitled Millennium. The programme devoted to the fourteenth century opens with the following disclosure: “In the fourteenth century, the century of the scythe, natural disasters threatened civilisations with extinction. The Black Death kills more people in Europe, Asia and North Africa than any catastrophe has before. Civilisations which avoid the plague thrive. In West Africa the Empire of Mali becomes the richest in the world.”

40. Malian sailors got to America in 1311 AD, 181 years before Columbus. An Egyptian scholar, Ibn Fadl Al-Umari, published on this sometime around 1342. In the tenth chapter of his book, there is an account of two large maritime voyages ordered by the predecessor of Mansa Musa, a king who inherited the Malian throne in 1312. This mariner king is not named by Al-Umari, but modern writers identify him as Mansa Abubakari II.

41. On a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 AD, a Malian ruler, Mansa Musa, brought so much money with him that his visit resulted in the collapse of gold prices in Egypt and Arabia. It took twelve years for the economies of the region to normalise.

42. West African gold mining took place on a vast scale. One modern writer said that: “It is estimated that the total amount of gold mined in West Africa up to 1500 was 3,500 tons, worth more than $¬¬¬¬30 billion in today’s market.”

43. The old Malian capital of Niani had a 14th century building called the Hall of Audience. It was an surmounted by a dome, adorned with arabesques of striking colours. The windows of an upper floor were plated with wood and framed in silver; those of a lower floor were plated with wood, framed in gold.

44. Mali in the 14th century was highly urbanised. Sergio Domian, an Italian art and architecture scholar, wrote the following about this period: “Thus was laid the foundation of an urban civilisation. At the height of its power, Mali had at least 400 cities, and the interior of the Niger Delta was very densely populated”.

45. The Malian city of Timbuktu had a 14th century population of 115,000 – 5 times larger than mediaeval London. Mansa Musa, built the Djinguerebere Mosque in the fourteenth century. There was the University Mosque in which 25,000 students studied and the Oratory of Sidi Yayia. There were over 150 Koran schools in which 20,000 children were instructed. London, by contrast, had a total 14th century population of 20,000 people.

46. National Geographic recently described Timbuktu as the Paris of the mediaeval world, on account of its intellectual culture. According to Professor Henry Louis Gates, 25,000 university students studied there.

47. Many old West African families have private library collections that go back hundreds of years. The Mauritanian cities of Chinguetti and Oudane have a total of 3,450 hand written mediaeval books. There may be another 6,000 books still surviving in the other city of Walata. Some date back to the 8th century AD. There are 11,000 books in private collections in Niger. Finally, in Timbuktu, Mali, there are about 700,000 surviving books.

48. A collection of one thousand six hundred books was considered a small library for a West African scholar of the 16th century. Professor Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu is recorded as saying that he had the smallest library of any of his friends – he had only 1600 volumes.

49. Concerning these old manuscripts, Michael Palin, in his TV series Sahara, said the imam of Timbuktu “has a collection of scientific texts that clearly show the planets circling the sun. They date back hundreds of years . . . Its convincing evidence that the scholars of Timbuktu knew a lot more than their counterparts in Europe. In the fifteenth century in Timbuktu the mathematicians knew about the rotation of the planets, knew about the details of the eclipse, they knew things which we had to wait for 150 almost 200 years to know in Europe when Galileo and Copernicus came up with these same calculations and were given a very hard time for it.”

50. The Songhai Empire of 16th century West Africa had a government position called Minister for Etiquette and Protocol.

By Leon Walker-Freelance Writer  leonwalker@cox.net

I am amazed at what I have seen among young voters in this country. I am equally amazed that this is being ignored or overlooked in the media in favor of such nonsense as passports and preachers.  These snacks of political mischief that our media continues to serve us.  Something I like to call “the devil’s Hors d’oeuvres”.  Of all of the political stories of this campaign season, the story of America’s youth activism and participation is both awe inspiring and historically significant. 

The other day I was watching a live news report from the campus of a small college in North Carolina as I lay in bed.  At that moment I felt as if I was actually watching a Saturday pregame sports rally.  As a backdrop for the news commentators, there were several hundred excited students with signs, cheering in support of Senator Barack Obama and anticipating his forthcoming speech on their campus.  Now get this… It was 11:57 PM here in the Panhandle of Florida where I was resting comfortably.  Meaning of course, that it was nearly 1:00 AM in North Carolina!  Let me say this a different way.  When a bunch of college kids are hanging out at 1:00 AM awaiting a political rally I find that striking.  They were not at home studying, or partying or surfing the internet.  They were organizing and participating politically!  Perhaps this is not particularly significant to you.   So let me delicately suggest that you start paying attention.

The scene I have just described is being played out over and over again on hundreds of campuses throughout the country.  Millions of America’s youth are actively participating and their votes and voices are having a tremendous impact.  Say what you like about Generation Y, but what I know is, that they are a very bright and well educated generation of young people.  More importantly, they are also extremely comfortable with their identifications and associations across social and ethnic landscapes.  Two simple examples of this is truth, are their varied tastes in music and their many multi-cultural and multi-racial friends, classmates and associates.  This generation of young voters is far more comfortable with each other as people in general, as individuals, rather than members of any group.  This is an aspect of their blended reality that is more significant than any prior generation in the history of this country.

Generation “Y” is seemingly embracing Senator Obama because they not only believe in his message of change and his qualifications.  They are not only embracing him because they agree with his political views and in particular, his pledge to end the war in Iraq.  They are also embracing and supporting him because he “represents” and “looks like” them, and so many others among their friends, peers and intellectual and artistic icons. 

Generation “Y” is a mixture of “Americana” that we have not inspected and appreciated for its social intrigue.  Nor for its mystical model of  future generations.  Generation “Y” is what America is becoming and what America was intended, if not destined to become.

At fifty four years old this whole “Obama” story is just phenomenal for me.  However, this amazing story that is Senator Obama’s life, is not nearly as surprising for my niece who is a twenty year old “junior” in college.  Many of her close friends, classmates and associates are from international families, blended families, divorced families and from both challenged and affluent pasts.  She herself, has a father who is African (born and raised in Gambia) who is an engineer, educated in the United States.  Her mother (my sister) and our family are African Americans. 

We Americans see things from many different perspectives and that is among the many wonderful things that make life in this country both enjoyable and challenging.  It makes being an American special and wonderful in a variety of ways.  That is also why is so important to take note of what so many of our young people are currently engaged in politically.  Their votes and voices and activism are sending a resounding message that deserves much more consideration.  Not only should we be more loudly applauding their participation, we should be absorbing a very significant message.  We should be observing the example of these youth.  Our children and young family members are teaching us a lesson.  They are demonstrating to America what America really is.  They are “walking the American walk” in a way that is not affected or contrived.  Why?  Because they live in a technological world that is colorful and colorless.  They do not carry around old scars of political or social ideology as inescapable baggage.  Why?  Because they have information, education and experiences that are new and very different.  Different from those of the average (dare I say “typical”) American of twenty or thirty years ago or beyond.

Generation “Y” is having an incredible impact on this political contest and they are a voting block that may well make the difference.  This is to say nothing of the fact that they have influence.  Influence on their parents and family members in encouraging their participation and swaying them to their way of thinking.  It is a pretty powerful thing when your child invites you to have an adult discussion (about anything) and requests your support.

I am so very proud of America’s youth and what I have been privileged to see them so intensely engaged in this political season.  This is a historic story that I will continue to tell for years to come.  I would like nothing more than to see this contest for the Democratic Party nomination end as soon as possible.  In the meantime, I am focusing my attention not on the moldy media snacks, but on the “Obama” youth support movement.

I don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican or Independent.  I don’t care what your views on any particular candidate or issues are.  You might want to just take a moment to look over your shoulder and observe and what our young people are doing. 

They are gathering like a storm.

L. A. Walker

© Leon A. Walker, March  2008

During last night’s edition of “Hardball” (Apr.1st) Chris Matthews asked his guest the following:

“Let me ask you about how he — how’s he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?”

At the beginning of the show he teased his Obama segement by saying the following:

“[C]an Obama woo more regular voters — you know, the ones who actually do know how to bowl?”

The night before he had this to say:

“[T]his gets very ethnic, but the fact that he’s good at basketball doesn’t surprise anybody, but the fact that he’s that terrible at bowling does make you wonder.”

What makes me wonder, is how he equates the sport of bowling with “regular people.” I guess that “regular people” don’t play basketball either…I also wonder if he is going to ask Barack about bowling tonight when he appears on his show? Hmmm…

Reference: MediaMatters (Includes video of the broadcast quoted)

MSNBC is reporting that Harold Ickes, a Senior Aide to the Clinton campaign has admitted to pushing the Jeremiah Wright issue with undecided superdelegates. While it probably would be naive to think that they wouldn’t, it just lends more creditability to the idea that the Clinton backers are waging their own version of the GOP’s old “Southern Strategy.” I just hope that the superdelegates see through this and realize that the Wright issue will not be very valuable to the GOP, due to Obama’s skillful handling of the issue. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about Hillary and her “Sniper Fire” story.

Reference: MSNBC