Olorunda Interview with Rosa Clemente
Tolu Olorunda, who scored one of the better interviews with Cynthia McKinney ealier this month, has a new interview up at Your Black World with Rosa Clemente. I highly recommend both interviews, as they provide more depth into both Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente than most other sources, and it is straight from the source. A sample from the Rosa Clemente interview:
What are the issues of critical mass in this election, and how do you gauge the youth’s lively response to the call for change?
Well, most of those young people are middle-class college students. They (Obama and the DNC) made it pretty clear who their target youth audience is. I’ve been saying that since the beginning, that the young people, who are attracted to Obama, are predominantly white and liberal-leaning. There’s a difference between young people on college campuses – who have the ability to intellectualize, debate and engage in this process – and those who haven’t even graduated from High School, but are being recruited by the military. That clearly is a different demographic, and Obama’s campaign seems to be targeting the former. Young people began this sudden interest in voting, around 2004, and I think part of that has to do with the founding of the Hip-Hop Convention, and how particularly the Hip-Hop community brought a political agenda that spoke to the needs and issues that young people care about in this country. But on the flip-side of that, only 1 out of 14 young people who are not in college are registered to vote. That means, essentially, they see no hope in voting. So I even think the issues among the diverse demographics of young people are different. ‘Obama’s young people’ would say they want an end to the War in Iraq, and young people in the hood would say they want an end to the war of the police. ‘Obama’s young people’ would advocate for the impeachment of George Bush, and young people in the hood are looking for livable jobs and second jobs, just to maintain. So the claim that the youth vote is unilaterally swinging toward Obama is not true. You don’t see Obama going to the Boys and Girls club in Oakland, California; or the Martin Luther King Recreation Center; or a Black and Brown unity forum — which is happening everywhere, since the media is attempting to pit Blacks against Browns. I don’t see him in those spaces, and therefore, their issues are never reflected. Barack Obama couldn’t even articulate a decent statement about the exoneration of Sean Bell’s killers. So the youth vote might be the highest it’s ever been, but there’s still almost 50% of the youth population who are not registered to vote, and who don’t care about this election, because they don’t see any politician willing to do something that would benefit them immediately.
In light of that, how does the McKinney/Clemente ticket plan on compelling those despondent would-be-voters to support your candidacy?Well, what I’m trying to do right now, is not get caught up in this Hip-Hop hype that is supposedly coming out for Barack Obama; but I’m also trying to get into spaces were gang truces are being held. Young people are fighting these taser-deaths that have killed 5 young men within the last 2 weeks. I’m going right into the community. I view my role as the Green Party V.P. as long-term, because come January 20, 2009, we must all be prepared to hold the new office-holders completely accountable, and build a movement from the ground. And I think that requires me being in spaces where people have completely disassociated themselves with any type of political-organizing. The Green Party is scheduled to have lawyers on the ground in the major states, to ensure that every vote is counted. No other party is doing that. It was the Green Party lawsuit in 2004 Ohio, which exposed that over 1 million African-American votes were not counted. So I think it is critical that people understand how serious we are, in guaranteeing election integrity. After that, I’m hoping to – with the help of The Green Party – inspire young people to run for office in local posts. If we had more young people sitting on judicial benches, the amount of young folks of color going to jail would be significantly different. So I’m hoping that young people get the message that we don’t have to be – by default – beholden to the Democratic Party anymore. They really need to learn a lesson; and the lesson is that, they’ve completely – in 4 yrs – let down the African-American, Latino, and working-class people in this country. They’ve made it clear that they would continue to lie to people of color in this country.
Read the entire Interview here.
And a bonus video – Rosa speaks one year ago on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and her experiences covering the tragedy as a journalist.
[...] Black World“, who has previously posted two excellent interviews with Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente. At the end of the piece he juxtaposes Obama’s pick with that of [...]