You want alchemy?
They turn the roses into gold
They turn the lilac into honey
They're making love for the peaches.
And they'll do it,
Do it for you.
• [As musicians] we have a responsibility to society. . . . We're not supposed to do hits. We are not supposed to be rich. . . . We are supposed to listen to people, their joy, their sadness, their problems, and just try to transcend this and give it back to people who can [then use what we've created] to organize themselves.
• Music is my politics; harmony and what music can make you feel. At that moment you open and can hear the message. And the message is talking about human beings . . . about their past, their story, and about what happened in Africa; what really happened in the beginning [of the colonial era] and why things are like [they are today] and why there is division and hatred [in the world].
• It's a time for all of us in the world, for human beings, to understand that we all are the same, and we all come from the same place, and we are all going to the same place. And it is time for us to understand that we have to live together.
Singer-songwriter Daby Touré's latest album, Amonafi, is sonically compelling [and] thematically is for our time. A lot of the songs on it are about displacement and address many Africans' desire to go to Europe to seek a better life.
But, there’s one song though called “Oma” that suggests Europe is not all that it’s cracked up to be. So we wanted to know what Touré thought as the world witnesses thousands of migrants and refugees pouring into Europe right now.
His home base is Paris, and he meets many people who've arrived there from far-flung crisis spots around the world. This is the starting point for “Oma.”
“I wrote this song because I was seeing people every day outside,” he says in an interview at Berklee's Café 939 in Boston. “And there was this woman down on the street . . . I would always say hello and we would talk a little bit. And one day we had a really good talk. She told me about her life and the difficulties she has with her children – and the fact that she’s homeless. What surprised me was [how] everyday we pass in front of these people and we get used to it.”
Touré, who is from Mauritania and Senegal in West Africa, says he really wanted to write a song and talk about her story.
“It wasn’t easy, but I did it because I was seeing these people coming out from everywhere – from all the poor countries and from Africa of course,” he says. “What is really interesting to see is how people are reacting in front of these refugees coming out from Syria. Everybody is scared and we don’t have to be.”
That woman he met on the streets of Paris, along with the refugees and the migrants who are coming over to Europe right now, seem to echo Touré's own story of displacement.
“My story is the same,” he says. “When I was 2 years old, my parents got separated and my father started to send me everywhere: Senegal, Mauritania, to his mother, to his uncle. For him it was important for me to learn life earlier.”
Touré says that because he was largely on his own, he had to learn to communicate with people and understand the differences between the communities he was dropped into and himself.
“Every time I had to find a way to make myself like ‘I’m part of you, can you accept me?' And so this is how my life started,” he says. “So I can really understand these people I can feel exactly what they feel.”
For a while now, the modern Democratic Party, captured by big business and cowed by the Right, has tended to emphasize the symbolic and rhetorical, the great speeches and history-making milestones that The West Wing mistaught a generation was the essence of politics. And the Democratic National Convention is its four-yearly apotheosis, a purely symbolic and rhetorical affair briefly ensconcing American liberals in an imagined version of what their country could one day look like, but – as their party continually insists the other 361 days of the year – never will.
. . . [E]ven as Democrats continue selling themselves as the party of the people, the 2020 DNC speakers’ roster is one overwhelmingly made up of the superrich. Of the thirty-five scheduled speakers (not counting “the Biden family”), at least twenty-three are worth more than a million dollars, with nineteen worth more than $4 million, and thirteen worth upwards of $10 million. That includes the nominee himself, with the Bidens having made $15 million off book deals and speaking fees in 2017–18 alone, as well as the billionaires Bloomberg and Whitman, and multimillionaires like the Obamas, Clintons, Kasich, and Pelosi.
Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the thirty-year-old progressive insurgent popular among both Democrats and young people, is being given only sixty seconds to speak, in a prerecorded message. This, despite polling showing Democrats are more excited to hear her speak than to hear Kasich and the Clintons.
. . . [T]he modern Democratic Party under Joe Biden [is] a party dominated by figures who have spent their entire careers opposing what they claim to fight for now, and more concerned with building a coalition with well-off conservatives than its own young, progressive, and increasingly diverse voting base.
If we had a functioning judicial and legislative system, [Joe] Biden, along with the other architects of our disastrous imperial wars, plundering of the country and betrayal of the American working class, would be put on trial, not offered up as a solution to our political and economic debacle. The myopia of the ruling elites is that they think they can foist Biden on us because he is not Trump. But the game is up. The façade of democracy no longer works.
I recommend that we learn about, support, and promote the many down-ballot progressive Democratic candidates running in the 2020 House and Senate races at both the state and federal levels, as opposed to the so-called “moderate,” corporatist Democratic candidates who are advocating, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “the tranquilizing drug of incrementalism.” One resource to help in this is the Down-Ballot Progressive Candidate Summit that former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson is currently hosting. Every night for seven nights (June 2-8) Marianne will be in conversation with a down-ballot progressive/visionary, non-“ruling elite” (in the words of Hedges) Democratic candidate. I've been tuning in, getting educated and inspired, being reminded of why it is we need these types of Democratic leaders, and (when I can) making a financial contribution to their campaigns. I also recommend The Current Affairs Guide to Left Candidates 2020 as another helpful resource.
NOTE: To view this and the many other interviews with down-ballot progressive candidates that Marianne Williamson faciliated throughout the summer, click here.
Well, as long as the nomination process is on-going, I'm going to hope for the very best candidate, or that this very best candidate at least secures the greatest number of delegates possible so as to be able to influence the party's platform, ensuring that it is as progressive as possible. However, if Biden does indeed secure the nomination, which I realize is most likely to happen, then, post-convention, I will be encouraging people to vote for him, highlighting the BIG positive aspect about him which is that he's not Trump. The bulk of my positive energy and support, however, is now – and will be right up until November – directed toward down-ballot progressive candidates at both the state and federal levels. They're the folks whose platforms I feel a natural passion for, the type of passion and enthusiasm one can't fake. I simply don't have that same kind of passion and enthusiasm for a centrist like Biden. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm choosing to stay positive and hopeful by following my passion and supporting and promoting the many progressive Democratic down-ballot candidates. These congressional and state races, after all, are just as crucial as the presidential one.
My kindergarten teacher told me that I would be dead or in jail by age 21. She is about to find out that all things are possible, when I'm sworn in as a Florida State Representative at age 21.
Sitting on your bank, in touch with all I see
You rise and you fall,
Bringing life so perfectly
On your journey constantly
River running free, lay your wisdom down on me
River, river
Flowing in the world outside
If I knew your secret
I would turn the tide
River, river, turn around
Come on and lay your wisdom down
Lay your wisdom down.
Journey goes on
What I wouldn't do to run beside you now
Rolling on, skipping over pools of light,
Even through the darkest night
River running bright, lay your wisdom down tonight
River, river
Flowing when the world was young
Nothing new under the sun
I'm calling to a sweeter sound
Come on and lay your wisdom down
Lay your wisdom down.
Above: Looking across the Mississippi to the area of shoreline where Raul and I spent time yesterday.
Water reminds us that we are able to show up in alternate ways and forms without abandoning our true nature. We are shape-shifters. Depending on the environment and circumstances and our own internal state, we may express as thunderous anger, icy disdain, or a bubbling brook of joy.
Contemporary social mores tend to tamp down authentic and spontaneous expression. We have been programmed to react like clockwork, calculate and calibrate our feelings, in order to comply with a mechanistic, industrialized system that values efficiency over feelings. And yet, our power lies in our passions. We can be flooded with emotion in any moment. The waters of our sacred being are not easily controlled.
. . . Living close to our hearts is not about being perfect. Water reminds us that there will be times when in order to heal, we will need to express rage, our pain, our hurt. There will be other times when we need to call upon the slow strength of glaciers, or act like the gentlest rain or an unstoppable torrent, or draw on the still, calm waters of our innermost beings.
In the words of the poet Langston Hughes, our souls have “grown deep like the rivers.” When we embrace and express the fullness of our soulfull emotions, we begin to discover the deep current of love that runs within us. Owning our passions, we connect to our unstoppable hearts. Our emotions become cleaner and clearer. They flow from deep within and in genuine response to our present circumstances.
Water, ice, steam. Our true powers of expression come from knowing the many forms of our own river.
Today on Fox, Trump made it clear that his effort to defund the Postal Service is a blatant attempt at mass voter suppression. No, Mr. President. We won't let you sabotage the election. This is a democracy, not a damn dictatorship. Your reign of authoritarianism will soon end.
There's no way to sugarcoat it: If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are elected, they'll still be influenced by the powerful forces that have shaped their careers. Biden has reassured billionaires that he doesn't think they're the problem. Wall Street has celebrated Biden's decision to choose Harris.
That's where you come in. Your activism – your constant, fearless, unyielding calls to conscience and sanity – will be the only counterforce to the pernicious influence of money in politics.
Should activists sit this election out? Not if you believe in activism. The right tactical call for activists is to elect the politicians they're most able to cajole, persuade, and pressure. That means viewing politicians in a different light: not as heroes or villains, but as tools. (And, no, I don't mean "tool" in the pejorative, slang sense – at least, not necessarily.) Confronted with the choice between Trump or Biden, the question isn't, which of these people do I admire? The question is, which of these people can I most effectively use as a tool for change?
Too many people in this country's progressive majority – a category that ranges from center-left to socialist – are still searching for heroes when they vote. There aren't many heroes in politics – although there are some, and their ranks are growing. But there are people that can be tools for change. Find them. Use them. But when it comes to heroes, look to yourselves. As the great civil rights leader Ella Baker said, “strong people don't need strong leaders.”
You are strong. Stay strong. . . . [A] strong people don't need strong leaders. But this is a time to speak, for anyone who has something to say. Personally, I want a radically different world than the one we live in today – a world mainstream politicians can't imagine, much less build. I believe we'll need that kind of world to survive what's coming. But we will have to cross a long, hard political landscape before we reach it.
With this announcement, movement activists now have more information about the terrain they'll need to navigate. Information is power. So is activism. My plea to you, as someone with no particular standing to make a plea, is this: Use this information. Stay powerful. Know that you can win – that we can win – if we love, hope, and work together.
I will admit I am considerably more progressive than Joe Biden, but on election day I won’t be thinking of that. On election day I will be trying to salvage what is left of our democratic process. Four more years of stacked courts and crony capitalism can only make our humanitarian ideals less obtainable. Yes, we need viable third parties. Yes, we need better candidates. And, yes, we should work on all of that 364 days a year. But, on election day I will vote on whoever realistically gets us closest to our humanitarian goals.
I have many wonderful friends who say “to vote for the lesser of two evils is still evil.” That may be true in the pristine world of human language, but in the real world it is decidedly less evil than inaugurating four more years of the greater of two evils by our inaction. I will join you 364 days a year in building better options; but on election day I will not be voting for personalities, I will be voting for leverage.
Harris stakes out some important turf for the Democratic ticket. She is a woman with both Black and South Asian American roots, enabling the Democrats to illustrate their commitment to a multiracial democracy by nominating her. She is crackerjack smart, a quality that many Americans would like to see in an administration. She is seen as a defender of the rule of law at a time when it seems under attack – she caught Attorney General William Barr in a falsehood at his confirmation hearing, noticeably throwing him off and forcing him to avoid her question out of fear of perjury. At 55, she is a generation younger than Biden (or Trump) balancing out the older ticket. And since she was hard on Biden during the primaries, his invitation to her indicates his willingness to accept criticism and continue to work with those who are not yes-men, a significant contrast to Trump.
. . . Already Republicans are insisting that Harris, a former prosecutor, is, as Trump tweeted, part of a “radical left.” National Review ran an article titled “Kamala Harris Is Farther Left Than Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.” Trump campaign advisor Katrina Pierson said that Harris had “gleefully embraced the left’s radical manifesto” during her own run for the presidency, and that Biden’s choice showed that he was “surrendering control of our nation to the radical mob.”
The Republicans are clearly hoping to convince voters that Harris is an extremist. It will not be an easy charge to make stick to a former prosecutor, especially on a day when a Republican candidate who supports QAnon conspiracy theories won a congressional primary in a solidly-Republican district in Georgia, virtually guaranteeing that she will go on to Congress. Marjorie Taylor Greene seems the definition of an extremist. She has spouted anti-Semitic, anti-Black, and Islamophobic comments, and called George Soros a “Nazi.” She has defended QAnon, a mysterious source of a belief that Trump is secretly fighting against a well-connected ring of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that has taken over the government, praising the source as “someone that very much loves his country, and he’s on the same page as us, and he is very pro-Trump.”
Diversity is broader than race and gender. . . . Diversity of experience, mindset, and priorities also matters. And you may know where Kamala Harris sits along this continuum by polling the constituency groups that put up the money for establishment Democratic campaigns. They are enthusiastically supportive of Harris, who comforts their fears of a more aggressive posture against those in seats of power in America. They relish her being one step from the Oval Office, and maybe in four years, in it.
As my colleague Bob Kuttner pointed out yesterday, Wall Street was positively jubilant upon hearing the news of Harris’s ascendancy. Silicon Valley is similarly excited that someone with close friendships with top tech leaders could find herself a heartbeat away from the presidency. Hollywood sung from the rooftops as well. Trial lawyers are thrilled.
This is made all the more problematic by the continued introduction of Harris as a fighter against the very forces now rising up in unified approval of her. Biden, in his introductory comments on Harris, led by pointing out she “took on the big banks” during the foreclosure crisis. I don’t know how many times I can say that this is an insult to the ten million American families that lost their homes in that period.
Nobody in a position of power at the big banks saw the inside of a jail cell, nobody had to give up their bonus, and no bank suffered greatly from the wrist slap, largely paid with other people’s money, for mass-producing false evidence to kick people out of their homes. Nothing pains me more than having to retread this old ground. You can read here for the details and here for some more. But the cries of pleasure from the very banks that Harris allegedly pushed around should settle the argument.
Big-money approval leads to, well, big money. Biden and Harris took in $26 million in the first 24 hours as running mates, helped along by a pre-planned blitz plotted by his bundlers that will take the candidates on a tour of each one of the interest groups that nodded in assent at the ticket’s formation.
This circumstance is actually revealing about both parties. The fact that Republicans are struggling with a “muddled message” on Harris when any populist worth their salt can point to the Wall Street and Big Tech backing and set that against the “forgotten” Americans confirms that there are, in fact, no actual conservative populists in the White House. That, plus the utter failure of Trump’s crisis response, should cement the determination of anyone marginally situated on the left of center to work their tail off to separate him from power, and hand it over to Biden-Harris.
Unfortunately, Biden’s political vision doesn’t offer much in the way of upending the conditions that made Trumpism possible. But his point that getting rid of Trump is of utmost importance is correct.
. . . For progressives and those on the Democratic Party’s so-called “left wing,” Biden’s candidacy has been a tough pill to swallow. After all, with an ongoing nationwide uprising against structural racism amidst a crushing pandemic and economic collapse, what circumstances could better illustrate the need for the type of confrontational, systemic change proposed by candidates like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren [and Marianne Williamson]? Yet now, with unemployment spiking, and millions taking to the streets to assert that Black Lives Matter and demanding officials defund the police, we’re in the unenviable position of being forced to acknowledge that voting for Biden – the author of the gruesome 1994 crime bill – and Harris – a former tough-on-crime prosecutor – is undeniably better than the alternative.
. . . The groups RootsAction and Progressive Democrats of America [are] blunt in their assessment of Harris: “While her penchant for taking positions broadly palatable to the corporate donor class raises concerns about her dedication to progressive principles, her habit of aligning her stance with the prevailing political winds gives us some hope.”
Ultimately, while defeating Trump remains a priority, it’s up to those of us on the left to generate the winds we want to prevail by building power outside of presidential politics. Taking to the streets for racial justice, strengthening the labor movement, demanding universal healthcare, establishing tenants’ unions, electing more candidates up and down the ballot who are committed to taking on corporate power to benefit the working class ” this is how we can reorient politicians’ incentives and priorities. The weather vanes will follow.
