This year’s Wild Reed “Queer Appreciation” series focuses on the grace, verve and message of British dancer Kadeem Hosein (known as Kadeem En Pointe).
It’s a message that is challenging, inspiring and liberating. Which makes it queer in the truest sense of the word (as I discuss in the first installment of this series).
It’s a queerness that continues in this second (and concluding) installment. Enjoy!
To my mind, Crosse’s piece, like Dorothy Lennon’s comments from yesterday, provides a much-needed reality check.
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Obama Center Dedication Turns Presidency
of War and Wall Street Bailouts
Into Democratic Camelot
By Jacob Crosse
World Socialist Web Site
June 18, 2026
The opening of the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side was an exercise in political myth-making. The Democratic Party, the Democratic-aligned media, business figures and an assortment of entertainment celebrities assembled Thursday to present the Obama presidency as an American Camelot. Barack and Michelle Obama were cast as the protagonists of a lost age of democratic grace, reason and moral purpose, interrupted by the aberration of Trump.
The $850 million complex, dominated by a massive stone tower that has been derided as an “Obamalisk,” was dedicated from a stage occupied by former presidents and first ladies, before an invited audience featuring a good number of multi-millionaires. For all the rhetoric about democracy and equality, the real social base of the Democratic Party was reflected in the highly privileged and wealthy audience seated before the main stage, while the rabble was relegated to Midway Plaisance Park to watch from the grass.
In attendance were former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Joe Biden, along with Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Jill Biden. The presence of Bush, the war criminal responsible for the invasion of Iraq, who came to power through the theft of the 2000 election, underscored the fundamental unity of the two parties of American imperialism.
The Democratic Party establishment was represented by figures from every wing of the party: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President and 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Also present was Michigan U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who joined in honoring Obama, the president who continued Bush’s “War on Terror” and institutionalized drone assassinations of so-called “enemy combatants,” including U.S. citizens.
The list of foreign dignitaries included former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and former Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj. Also in attendance were Tom Hanks, David Letterman, Stephen Colbert, Bono and the Edge of U2, Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Tems and Eddie Vedder.
The ceremony lasted more than three hours and combined militarism, celebrity worship and nationalist pageantry, overlain with identity and racial politics. Following a benediction, the Illinois National Guard presented the colors, and Jennifer Hudson sang the national anthem. This was followed by a promotional film narrated by Obama, filled with the hollow slogans of his 2008 campaign, including “Yes, we can” and calls to “imagine your impact.”
That Valerie Jarrett, chief executive officer of the Obama Foundation, delivered the first speech was politically significant. Jarrett, a longtime Obama associate, is representative of the reactionary social layer elevated through the Democratic Party and identity politics: wealthy, corporate-connected, deeply embedded in Chicago’s political machine and hostile to the working class.
Before serving as Obama’s senior adviser from 2009 to 2017, Jarrett was CEO of the Habitat Company, a major Chicago real estate firm that managed public housing developments, including Grove Parc Plaza, where poor residents lived in conditions marked by decay, vermin and neglect. Her career has included leading positions on corporate, financial, university and transit boards. Less than three weeks after the murder of George Floyd, amid mass protests against police violence, Jarrett rejected calls to defund the police and suggested that more money was needed for law enforcement.
The central political purpose of the ceremony was expressed in the speeches of Michelle and Barack Obama. Michelle Obama’s remarks are already being hailed by the media as “historic.” But like the rest of the event, they were aimed at rewriting the Obama years as a kind of Garden of Eden, ignoring the social devastation, war, police violence and corporate plunder that defined the period.
Michelle Obama praised her husband’s “dazzling brilliance” and “unshakable moral fiber,” declaring that he had made the country proud by “rescuing our economy, expanding healthcare, ending a war, ordering the Bin Laden raid, saving the auto industry, winning a peace prize, keeping us safe from Ebola, regulating the banks, standing up for marriage equality, listening to science, and comforting an entire nation in the face of unspeakable tragedies.”
Every phrase in this litany is false. “Rescuing our economy” refers to the bailout of Wall Street following the financial crash of 2008, which was initiated under Bush and expanded under Obama. Trillions of dollars in loans, guarantees and cash handouts were funneled to the banks, while millions of workers lost their homes. Not a single major Wall Street executive was prosecuted. When measures were proposed to limit executive pay at bailed-out firms, Obama intervened on behalf of the financial aristocracy. During the Obama presidency, the number of American billionaires rose from 359 to 565, a 57 percent increase.
“Expanding healthcare” refers to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, a program modeled on Romneycare that strengthened the domination of the insurance companies and funneled billions in public subsidies to the private healthcare industry.
“Ending a war” is perhaps the most grotesque claim of all. Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan, continued the occupation of Iraq, oversaw drone assassinations across the Middle East and Africa, initiated the CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria and backed the U.S.-NATO war in Libya, which destroyed the country and helped reintroduce open slave markets in North Africa.
The “saving” of the auto industry meant the use of federal bailout funds to impose a historic attack on autoworkers. In the 2009 managed bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler, tens of thousands of jobs were destroyed, plants were closed, new-hires’ wages were cut in half, strikes were banned for six years and the United Auto Workers bureaucracy was handed a direct financial stake in the “restructuring” through its control of the VEBA retiree healthcare trust.
Barack Obama’s own speech was no less reactionary. He preached “bipartisanship” and the “shared values” of the two parties of big business and war, declaring that a “sense of duty and honor” was not Republican or Democratic but “American,” and that every president on stage had tried to uphold these values. He explicitly included John McCain and Mitt Romney in this pantheon.
This was the political essence of the ceremony. Obama presents Trump as an interloper, a temporary departure from the “arc” of American democracy. In reality, the fascist Trump embodies the financial oligarchy that rules the U.S. He is the product of the very social order Obama rescued after the 2008 financial crash.
Obama’s reference to the United States as an “undeniable force for good in the world” was the greatest lie of all. In fact, U.S. imperialism is the undeniable center of global reaction, responsible for countless wars, occupations, sanctions, coups, assassinations and, more recently, outright genocide by its Israeli attack dog in Gaza.
The Obama Presidential Center is a monument to hypocrisy. Its purpose is to provide the Democratic Party with a usable myth as it seeks to contain popular hatred of Trump while blocking any independent movement of the working class.
– Jacob Crosse World Socialist Web Site
June 18, 2026
Opening Image: From left: Former President Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden, former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush, and former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pose ahead of the dedication ceremony for the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center. (Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais-Pool/Getty Images)
The mainstream narrative of Juneteenth is built on a benevolent myth: that General Gordon Granger stood on a balcony in Galveston, read General Order No. 3, and Texas enslavers immediately followed the law, peacefully freeing 250,000 enslaved people. This completely erases the high stakes and the military reality.
Texas was the last stronghold of the illegal slave empire. Enslavers had been hiding tens of thousands of Black people from the Emancipation Proclamation for two years, believing they were untouched by the war.
Freedom did not arrive as a friendly announcement. It was enforced through a ruthless military occupation. When Granger landed, a massive percentage of his occupying force was made up of thousands of heavily armed men from the United States Colored Troops (USCT). Texas enslavers did not surrender because they heard a speech. They surrendered because thousands of Black Union soldiers seized control of the city, aimed heavy weapons at their homes, and forced the system to collapse on June 19th 1865.
Earlier today, Young issued a statement in response to the June 16 arrest of fifteen Twin Cities residents in connection with anti-ICE protests, specifically for “conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers” and for efforts to allegedly “violently oppose immigration law enforcement” during the surge of federal immigration officers in Minnesota earlier this year.
Daniel Rosen, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, told reporters the 15 were “charged not for what they said but what they did.” However, Rosen, refused to answer specific questions connected to the alleged conspiracy, saying that evidence would be presented at a later date.
According to Minnesota Public Radio News: “Prosecutors say the 15 are members and associates of the protest group Direct Action Minnesota, which they describe as an antifa – or anti-fascist – affinity group. Antifa is an umbrella term describing any far-left-leaning militant groups and is not a singular entity. They consist of groups that resist fascists and neo-Nazis, especially at demonstrations.”
Following is Steve Young’s response to these developments.
We all wanted to believe that the worst of the Trump regime’s targeting of our community was behind us. Deep down, we felt it wasn’t true. Now we know that this battle is far from over.
On Tuesday, Federal agents arrested some of our neighbors, our friends, our comrades merely because they allegedly stepped up in the face of fascist aggression.
Do not let this bend you into submission. The fascist fist is tightening because it knows that it is losing its grasp on us. Continue to stand alongside your neighbors. Keep up your mutual aid efforts. Prepare your community for an uncertain future.
The eyes of the world are watching Minnesotans. We are in the belly of the beast. It is our duty to give this beast a terrible bellyache.
We outnumber them. Our neighborhoods are better organized than them. Stand strong, and stand proud. Do not give in. Do not give up. Check your OPSEC. Check in with your loved ones. Keep your whistles and your cameras with you wherever you go.
The road forward is rough, but we will walk it together. Together we will keep us all safe.
Fidelis Semper ad Populum,
– Steve
_____________________
Notes the website of the Green Party of Minnesota:
Steve Young is an attorney with nine years of experience in corporate law who has previously served as a member of the Minneapolis Food Council. Before law school, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 12 years as an infantry unit leader. He coached high school lacrosse for seven years and has volunteered with the Boy Scouts of America, church congregations, and Veterans For Peace. He owned and operated a small business, the Bryn Mawr Market, and has been very active in the community response to Operation Metro Surge. In addition to strong protections for the natural environment, support for single-payer healthcare, and a guaranteed basic income, he supports boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel, and an end to federal immigration operations in the state.
Opening image: Protesters rally outside the Warren E. Burger federal courthouse in downtown St. Paul on June 16, 2026, in support of activists who were arrested by the FBI. (Photo: Aaron Nesheim | Sahan Journal)
Today is the unveiling of Barack Obama’s presidential library. These moments, like funerals for American dignitaries, are always an example to whitewash their crimes and paint a revisionist history to indoctrinate the masses.
If the truth was allowed to be spoken at this ridiculous event, the public would’ve heard the following about the 44th president . . .
• Obama authorized over 540 drone strikes in countries including Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process.
• Obama was the first president who claimed the authority to assassinate American citizens. He exercised that power by ordering the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son.
• Obama had his administration selected by Citigroup. A 2016 WikiLeaks release of hacked e-mails revealed that in October 2008, Citigroup executive Michael Froman sent an e-mail to Obama's presidential transition team. The e-mail contained a list of recommended candidates, and a significant portion of those individuals were ultimately selected for Obama's first-term Cabinet.
• Obama authorized Shell to conduct limited exploratory oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska in 2015. He consistently bragged in interviews he made America the oil producing nation of the world.
• Obama expanded the role of the surveillance state under his administration. This was revealed thanks to the heroism of Snowden. When his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was asked about the program during his congressional testimony, he committed perjury by denying such a program existed.
• Obama implemented a healthcare plan out of the Heritage Foundation. The Affordable Care Act was the same plan Republican Senator Bob Dole ran on as the nominee for president in 1996 and Mitt Romney implemented as governor of Massachusetts.
• Obama came into office after President George W. Bush authorized torture and Wall Street committed fraud. After the Bush administration ordered torture/detained innocent prisoners and Wall Street held America hostage, the Obama administration refused to prosecute any of the criminals.
• Obama signed into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act. Under this provision, the executive branch has the authority to detain Americans indefinitely. The Obama administration tried to assuage the fears of Americans by telling them they never intended to use this provision. I am sure it was a coincidence after the provision was signed into law, Obama violated his campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay.
• Obama oversaw the loss of over 1000 seats of Democratic officeholders. Implementing a neoliberal agenda crippled the Democratic Party and paved the way for a demagogue like Donald Trump.
To mark this international day of celebration I share a wonderful video by Eric Karl Anderson, who on his YouTube channel describes himself as a “bearded book fan and blogger also known as LonesomeReader chatting about new fiction, book prizes, what I’m reading and what I want to read next.”
In the following 15-minute video, Eric not only talks about the published 1925 version of Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway but also the manuscript version published by SP Books in 2019. “[The manuscript version has] shown me how [Woolf’s] original version of the story was very different from the finished novel,” says Eric.
An American hero of mine, Chris Smalls, was recently a guest on The Real News Network. Here’s how his conversation with host Maximillian Alvarez is described on the podcast’s Facebook page:
We sit down with Chris Smalls, co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union, to discuss Smalls’ new book, When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class, the incredible story of the formation of the Amazon Labor Union and the unionization of the first Amazon warehouse in the U.S., and Smalls’ journey from warehouse worker and labor organizer to internationally recognized public figure and human rights activist who has sailed with humanitarian flotilla missions to Gaza and Cuba.
Following is The Real News Network’s full 45-minute interview with Chris Smalls.
“Not an escape from reality
[but] an attempt to look
at reality more honestly.”
At his substack Earth Drama, Christopher Schoenherr writes “essays decoding power, illusion, culture, politics, and the drama of being human.” Earlier today he wrote the following.
For years, Marianne Williamson has been mocked, dismissed, caricatured, and reduced to a collection of labels: crystal lady, orb queen, spiritual guru, New Age candidate. Her critics often assume that because she speaks about love, she must be speaking about something unserious.
But after reading her books Healing the Soul of America and A Politics of Love, I came away with a different conclusion. The most misunderstood thing about Marianne Williamson is not her spirituality. It is her definition of love.
Because in Williamson’s work, love is not an emotion.
It is a way of seeing.
A way of organizing society.
A way of deciding what matters.
A way of deciding who matters.
And ultimately, a way of deciding what civilization is for.
When Williamson talks about love, she is not talking about being nice.
She is not talking about avoiding conflict.
She is not talking about positive thinking.
She is not talking about pretending evil does not exist.
In fact, one of the most striking things about her work is how directly she confronts suffering.
She writes about poverty.
War.
Racism.
Corruption.
Child neglect.
Environmental destruction.
Corporate greed.
Democratic decline.
The politics of love is not an escape from reality.
It is an attempt to look at reality more honestly.
What she is really asking is a deceptively simple question:
What would society look like if human flourishing were the goal?
Not profit.
Not power.
Not partisan victory.
Not endless economic growth for its own sake.
Human flourishing.
The question sounds almost embarrassingly obvious.
Dalloway Day takes place globally on the third Wednesday in June, commemorating the fictional day in mid-June 1923 when the protagonist of Woolf’s novel, Clarissa Dalloway, walks through London to buy flowers for a party she’s hosting that night at her Westminster residence.
Through a stream-of-consciousness style that interweaves Clarissa’s experiences with those of other characters, most notably the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith, the novel explores not only Clarissa’s inner life, memories, and reflections on life, love, and death, but the social mores and structure of post-World War One England.
Ahead of Dalloway Day, here’s a fascinating 30-minute documentary by award-winning writer and academic Alexandra Harris that explores how Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway “completely re-imagined what a novel might be.”
Jacobin really thought it was doing labor strategy. What it actually did was publish a character assassination of a Black worker who committed the unforgivable sin of connecting the warehouse to the empire.
Chris Smalls helped crack open Amazon – one of the most powerful corporate machines on earth – and then refused to stay in the lane the respectable Left assigned him. He stood with Palestine. He stood with Cuba. He confronted ICE. He confronted [Amazon CEO] Jeff Bezos. He treated labor politics as something larger than contracts, elections, press hits, and polite speeches from politicians who want workers as backdrops.
And that is when the language changed. Suddenly it was not Amazon’s union-busting. Not the rotten labor-law regime. Not the Democratic Party’s graveyard of movements. Not the weakness of the official labor movement. Not the empire behind the boss. No. The problem was Chris Smalls’s “ego.” How convenient.
This is the old trick: when Black radical politics becomes internationalist, the respectable crowd turns the politics into a personality problem. Too loud. Too flashy. Too angry. Too undisciplined. Too much style. Too much confidence. Too much refusal. Too much worker acting like he has the right to speak on Palestine, Cuba, ICE, Bezos, police, politicians, and empire. They wanted him as a poster. They did not want him as a line.
. . . Smalls is not above criticism. No organizer is. Celebrity politics is not enough. Charisma is not organization. A movement cannot live on one face.
But bureaucratic respectability is not enough either. Electoral containment is not enough. A union with no fire becomes an office. A socialist politics afraid of anti-imperialism becomes management of decline.
The working class does not need mascots or managers. It needs organized anti-imperialist labor power. That means labor politics that does not stop at the warehouse gate. It means workers understanding that Amazon is not just a workplace, Bezos is not just a billionaire, Palestine is not just “foreign policy,” Cuba is not just “complicated,” ICE is not just immigration enforcement, and the Met Gala is not just culture.
It is all one system. They called it ego because they could not call it what it was: Black anti-imperialist labor politics.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
