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OPC Founder Omowe Frederick Fasehun LEADS the Way For UPN-Awolowo’s PARTY to RISE AGAIN!

 



How the idea of new UPN was mooted – Frederick Fasehun

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April 13, 2013 | 12:11 am

Interview, Top Stories

By Ishola Balogun & Florence Amagiya
Like a straight arrow that knows its target and ready to pierce without missing, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, the founder of Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), replies his critics on several allegations reported in the dailies recently.  As his voice rang heavily through the tape in this interview, the  Chairman of the committee for the resuscitation of Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, reveals how the idea of the new UPN was mooted and why he has not involved some stake-holders in the region in the current arrangement. 

He says  the contract to protect the pipelines in the South-West which he proposed to government has not been awarded and that no amount was quoted. He bares his mind on how Nigeria can end the menace of pipelines vandalisation among other issues. Excerpts.

Recent development sets you against the ACN; as a a stakeholder in the South-West, what is the bone of contention?

Sharma Mao of China once said: ‘Let a thousand flowers blossom’ and because a thousand flowers blossomed in China, it was a good time for China socio-economically and politically. I have no personal differences with any progressive group. I have always been saying that I love Nigeria,but I love my people more.  Anybody that says otherwise is a bloody liar.  You first love your people and then love your country.

This is because there is no country that is mono-ethnic. All countries have ethnic building blocs. Even our colonial masters, they have Scotland, Wales, Island in Anglo-saxons, but they call it United Kingdom.  It is a federation.

There, you have the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.  I have nothing against the ACN and I want to believe ACN has nothing against me.  But why are we thinking Dr. Fasehun has brought UPN to disorganise the South-West?  Did the ACN disorganise the South-West when it came and took the South-West from PDP?  It is not right to lie to a big country like this.

I didn’t form the Unity Party of Nigeria for any personal interest;  I am not intending to take any elective position; but I see a lot of failures in the system.  Nigeria would have been a great country but for the people.And why must you institutionalise lies, bogus propaganda just because we have political differences?  For some time now, people have been telling various lies about me just because they are jittery over the resuscitation of the UPN.

This is the party a lot of Nigerians have been waiting for.  Do you want the whole South West to sleep and face the same direction? In a polity that is aspiring for democracy, it is not done.  People have lied against me saying I have taken hundreds of millions of naira from Jonathan.

I told one person who hinted me about it that I can’t do such a thing.  I told him that I am a straight arrow but if anyone still hold the belief that I collected money from Jonathan, then that person should go and collect his own.  A few days later, they said I am being sponsored by the PDP to disorganise the South-West with a contract to protect the pipelines in the South-West.   One thing is that it is the duty of every citizen to protect the pipelines because it is the economic life-line of the country which has been subjected to indiscriminate bunkering.

On the 20th of November, 2010, OPC sent a proposal to the Federal Government that ‘we are capable of procuring and providing security and surveillance along the pipelines if you give us as a contract. Is Lai Muhammed saying six million members of the OPC don’t qualify for the award of contract from our country; moreso, that we are fighting unemployment?

If we put in about 35,000 people along the pipelines, it is not only the 35,000 persons that will benefit, their families also would benefit.  So, why are people criticising Dr. Fasehun even when the federal government has not approved the contract? So, I began to wonder, where did Lai Muhammed get his figures from?  I have no apologies to make on that.

But what was the actual figure you quoted in the proposal?

We did not even quote any figure in the proposal.  Because we wanted to work for the government, we believed that it is the federal government that will say: ‘okay we will award you this contract; what then is the cost or this is how much we will give you;’ but we have not reached that level of discussion.  So, Nigerians should find out from Lai Muhammed where he got his figures from.

You mean you did not quote any figure?

I can show you the proposal, we did not. I don’t know why they are jittery over a new thing that has come to be and that might see the end of what shouldn’t be. Nigeria must change. I thought Lai Muhammed was a friend. I had seen him as a leader but leaders must be role models. So, if Lai becomes a liar, then, it is very unfortunate for the youths of this country because they will see role models as liars and we will see liars as role models. The contract has not been awarded.

Now, how did you come about the resuscitation of UPN, did you carry the Yoruba leaders, elders and other stakeholders along?

I was carried along. South-Westerners in Europe and America got together and said no, Nigeria must be saved from the brink of collapse.  They took a decision that a political party that had no smear of bad records and an organisation being viewed with nostalgia is UPN and they would want to resuscitate it.  So, to have a new and national party, they pointed at UPN.  Having taken that decision, it became the responsibility of finding somebody to limp it, somebody to match the ideals of UPN and they chose me. I was not there, a delegation was sent to me here (his office) and they gave me the news.

I told them that I had sworn not to be in partisan politics because politics is not a sincere game here, but a game of cash-and-carry, a game of the-winner-steals-all, not only the winner takes all and that is why Nigeria is where she is.  So, I told them to give me some time to consider it and they said they were to fly back and I insisted I will communicate my decision to them by telephone.

They resolved to wait and they waited. I gave them my words of acceptance the third day, after I have consulted with my own group which agreed that we have been the foot soldiers of these politicians, we have been their tugs, we have been monitoring their lives and that of their children, now we should be part of the politics. It was then I told the delegation that I have considered their request.

How about funding?

I told them I don’t have money to match the Nigerian politics and they assured me that I don’t need to buy an envelope for the organisation.  That is why I said I was recruited. I came into the thinking in England and America.

So, it was mooted by Nigerians in the Diaspora?

Yes. They met and decided we should resucitate the party.

What is the stage of its registration now?

We initially got information that INEC was charging N100,000 to buy the form but later we got another conflicting information that it was N1million.

Then a good Samaritan said even if it will cost N1billion, we have to get it. He provided the money and we rushed to the bank and we sent somebody to Abuja. The person got to INEC office and met a lady (name withheld) who put some stumbling block in the way of purchasing the form. I have been told she is a mole there, that she scuttles the ambition of new political parties. Of course she will not be able to do this.  I said, no problem,  we will re-strategise.

But the following morning, it was splashed in the newspapers that INEC rejects UPN.  That is not politicking but a deceit.  When I read through the story, people don’t know that children will only fail exam when they have only sat for it.  You don’t fail an exam you have not sat for.  If she refuses to do her duties, we will go above her because it is our legitimate right.

What is the role of Gen. Adeyinka, Pa Fasanmi and other Afenifere bigwigs in the whole of these?

They are all my political fathers, but have you forgotten that a group of people disorganised the Afenifere.  These are the characters that are true leaders of Yoruba, the Ayo Adebanjo, Pa Jakande, Pa Fasoranti, Olaniwuns, the Olu Falaes, Babatopes and the Awolowo family.  Before I accepted to be in the leadership of the UPN, I went to the Matriach of the UPN and she prayed for me, and if I had seen Mama, I had seen the Awolowo family.  Now, if you involved the others without doing the hatchet job, you will be exposing them to the ridicule of the ACN.  I was not going to expose them to such thing, they would have read it in the newspapers, some of them have gotten in touch with me.



The only person among them that I have visited is Jakande; and I know nobody can ridicule Jakande.  These characters have a way of destroying leadership, I will not subject the Yoruba leaders to the ridicule of these urchins.  I know there have been roots, there have been stems, branches and leaves of the UPN, when the party is registered, I will take the certificate to them and say this is your organisation.  And you see, people have been giving their support.  There is only one state that has not register its membership with the party and that is Zamfara.

What about the royal fathers?

There are some of our fathers we do not want to involved in politics, like the Ooni, the Alaafin, the Olowo, the Alake, the Awujale and many others. I can swear that I did not mention it to them but it is basically to shield them from partisan politics but the day we are registered, we shall inform them of the new party.

And you hope they will give their blessings?

By the grace of God.

What is your view about the amalgamation of the opposition called APC?

I dont believe in this amalgamation.  An amalgam is a mixture of various elements, each component is allowed to maintain its attributes and composition and tendencies.  That is why I don’t believe in the merger. Where are the previous mergers we have had in the past? What we need now is sincere leaders and nationalistic patriots that will put us in the path of righteousness.

We will not be nationalistic if we merge political platforms. Manifestos, programmes and ideologies are from the right, left and the centre.  So, where have Nigerians found sixty ideologies?  When you are given the opportunity to serve your country, it is the greatest opportunity.  We are nostalgic about Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Saduana. Where are their international hotels, where are their mansions and monuments, where are their airlines and shipping companies and banks?  These are great leaders. PRP founded by Aminu Kano has been woken up, and if NAP by Tunji Braitwait has been resuscitated, we have no fear that UPN will see the light of the day again.

Is it only a resuscitation of name or the ideals of the party as it were those days?

It is not the cap, or the spectacle, but the ideologies that is expressed in the welfarism and social democracy of the people. That is Awoism.

Now, how do you intend to secure the pipelines from the vandals if the contract is awarded?

You’re asking me to reveal my method to the criminals?  If OPC is given the opportunity to protect the pipelines,within one year, bunkering, vandalisation will go into history.  We have outlined only for the South-West which covers 5,260kilometers radius.We expect the NNPC to give the South-South to MEND; the Volunteer Force and the South East to MASSOB; the Delta area to Anioma 911; the Middle Belt to Middle Belt Congress and even the core North to ACF.  We don’t want to continue to be tied to the apron-strings of the politicians as their foot soldiers. ‘Don’t give me fish, teach me how to catch fish’.

How do you intend to combine the two responsibilities should the government award the contract as your UPN sets for politicking?

I have been managing the OPC now for 19years.  In that span of time, I must have acquired some management technique and integrity to be able to keep 6million youth together for 19 years.  I hope to use that experience.  It is nothing but self-discipline and integrity.

Don’t you  think people might see OPC in the  garb of UPN and vice-versa or how do intend to strike a balance between the two?

OPC is set to defend our people and ensure that justice is done and that is what we will continue to do.  Again, we are not going to practice the politics of hostilities, conflicts and confrontations.  Certainly not. I have spoken earlier to debunk the lies against OPC and my person.  I don’t need billions of naira. We will go on manifesting politics without bitterness and at all levels and to all parties and at every forum.

Based  on what the country has witnessed in the last few years, what is your idea of leadership in 2015?

Whoever that emerges as the president must be in charge.  He must be able to say no, we won’t give amnesty to those who have killed toddlers, who have burnt churches.  Amnesty in the Nigerian context has a definition which was provided by Yar’Adua.  You must first submit your arms, veils and come to table. That is why amnesty is succeeding.  Some of our leaders unfortunately want a blank cheque to be written in the name of Boko Haram as amnesty.

I have also told the President that those who are seeking for amnesty for Boko Haram must also know where they live, must know their names.  It is not proper to just give out money for their representatives to distribute amongst them.  They must first answer to the definition of amnesty.  Let us also take a look at the records of the dead.  Why are you considering amnesty for ghosts without the records of the dead ones.  Is it fair?

Going by the reports that Boko Haram members have been traced to Lagos, do you have any fear that these terrorists will invade South West and if you do, what will you do?

I don’t have any fear they will come to Lagos and I don’t believe these rumours making the rounds about Boko Haram in Lagos.  They did not go to Alausa, Ikoyi or Victoria Island or the GRAs, they went to Badia. They don’t operate like that.  In any case, when security operatives want some money from the government, they scare the government and they begin to panic.

We are Nigerians, we know what is going on.  So far, they have limited their operations to the north, because that is their territory.  What reason will they advance to the international community for attacking the South-West.   Again, you asked a hypothetical question, (long pause) we will not run into the bush. South-Westerners will not run into the bush.

Fire-for-fire?

I didn’t say that, but we will not run into the bush.  We will defend our territory.  I hope you understand that in warfare, every method is right.

OBAMA! -VOGUE MAGAZINE 2012 INTERVIEW WITH BOTH OUR BLACK PRESIDENT ATI OUR BLACK SKINNED BEAUTY FIRST LADY IN THE BLACK HOUSE!

BLACK LOVE IN ACTION!

VOGUE Magazine

Leading by Example: First Lady Michelle Obama

photographed by Annie Leibovitz


VIEW SLIDESHOW

At the start of a second term, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama talk to Jonathan Van Meter about their life as parents, their marriage, and their vision for America’s families.

One morning in late January, I am standing at one end of the grand red-carpeted corridor that runs through the center of the White House, when suddenly the First Lady appears at the other. “Heeeee’s comin’,” she says of her husband’s imminent arrival. “He’s coming down the stairs now.” The president is on his way from the residence above, and just a split second before he appears, the First Lady, in a midnight-blue Reed Krakoff sleeveless dress and a black kitten heel, slips into the tiniest bit of a surprisingly good soft-shoe, and then the two of them walk arm in arm into the Red Room to sit for a portrait by Annie Leibovitz. The photographer has her iPod playing the Black Eyed Peas song “Where Is the Love?” It is a mid-tempo hip-hop lament about the problematic state of the world. As the First Lady and an aide laugh together over some inside joke, the president starts nodding his head to the beat: “Who picked the music? I love this song.”

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I’m gettin’ older, y’all, people gets colder
Most of us only care about money makin’
Selfishness got us followin’ the wrong direction

A few minutes later, Leibovitz has the president sit in a comfortable chair and then directs the First Lady to perch on the arm. At one point, the First Lady puts her hand on top of his and, instinctively, he wraps his fingers around her thumb. “There’s a lot of huggin’ going on,” says Leibovitz, and everyone laughs. “You’re a very different kind of president and First Lady.”

See our animated video of Michelle Obama’s best looks.

That they are. Put aside for a moment that they are the first African-Americans to preside in the White House, or that it feels perfectly normal to see the president enjoying a hip-hop song in the Red Room before lunch, or that the First Lady has bucked convention by routinely mixing Thom Browne and Alexander McQueen with J.Crew and Target, or that Malia and Sasha’s grandma lives with them upstairs, or that the whole family texts and takes pictures of one another with their smart phones. What is truly unusual about the Obamas is that, in their own quietly determined way, they have insisted on living their lives on their terms: not as the First Family but as a family, first.

First Lady of Fashion: See Michelle Obama’s Best Dressed Moments

“He is a dad,” says the president’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, “and a husband, and he enjoys being with his children and his wife. He doesn’t have a father. He’s trying really hard to be a good dad.” Says former senior adviser David Axelrod, “This is conjecture on my part, but I have to believe that because of the rather tumultuous childhood that he had, family is even more important to him. It’s central to who he is. That’s why he’s home every night at 6:30 for dinner.”

Click through our archival slideshow First Ladies in Vogue.

The president and First Lady both seem to be in ebullient moods, and deservedly so. His surprisingly decisive reelection is now history; the tonally precise inauguration is ten days behind them. The First Lady, it must be said, is funny, and it soon becomes clear that she can’t resist an opportunity to tease her husband. The first real question I ask them is about the persistent notion among the Washington press corps that they—unlike, say, the Reagans or the Clintons—are somehow antisocial, that they don’t privately entertain enough at the White House, that they don’t break bread and smoke cigars and play poker with their enemies. When I joke that they might want to “put that idea to rest” once and for all, the president starts to answer, but his wife, whose back has gone up ever so slightly, cuts him off. “I don’t think it’s our job to put an idea to rest. Our job is, first and foremost, to make sure our family is whole. You know, we have small kids; they’re growing every day. But I think we were both pretty straightforward when we said, ‘Our number-one priority is making sure that our family is whole.’ ”

They are quick to point out that most of their friends have kids themselves, and that when they go on vacation, usually with longtime family friends and relatives, they end up with a houseful of children. “The stresses and the pressures of this job are so real that when you get a minute,” the First Lady says, “you want to give that extra energy to your fourteen- and eleven-year-old. . . .” “Although,” her husband says, a big grin spreading across his face, “as I joked at a press conference, now that they want less time with us, who knows? Maybe you’ll see us out in the clubs.”

“Saturday night!” says the First Lady. “The kids are out with their friends. Let’s go party!”

“ ‘The Obamas are out in the club again?’ ” says the president, laughing. “What is true,” he says, more seriously, “is that we probably—even before we came to Washington—had already settled in a little bit to parenthood. And. . . .” Here he pauses in the way that only President Obama can. “Let’s put it this way: I did an awful lot of socializing in my teens and 20s.

Read André Leon Talley’s story on Michelle Obama as she settled into the White House in 2009.

“But what is also true,” he says, “is that the culture in Washington has changed in ways that probably haven’t been great for the way this place runs. . . . When you talk to the folks who were in the Senate or the House back in the sixties, seventies, eighties, there was much less pressure to go back and forth to your home state. . . . Campaigns weren’t as expensive. So a lot of members of Congress bought homes here in the area; their kids went to school here; they ended up socializing in part because their families were here. By the time I got to the Senate, that had changed. Michelle and the girls, for example, stayed in Chicago, and I had this little bachelor apartment that Michelle refused to stay in because she thought it was a little, uh. . . .”

“Yikes,” she says.

“You know, pizza boxes everywhere,” he says. “When she came, I had to get a hotel room.” The First Lady leans in toward me. “That place caught on fire.”

“It did end up catching on fire,” says the president sheepishly.

“And I was like, I told you it was a dump,” she says. Her husband continues, “As a consequence, I think, when the Washington press writes about this, part of what they’re longing for has less to do with us; it has to do with an atmosphere here where there was more of a community in Washington, which did result, I think, in less polarization. Because if your kids went to school together and you’re seeing each other at ball games and church, then Democrats and Republicans had a sense that this is not just perpetual campaigning and political warfare.”

Special Edition Best Dressed: Michelle Obama’s Polished Podium Looks

While the First Lady may not be a Tiger Mom, and the Obamas may not be helicopter parents (despite their access to Marine One), they are, in fact, exemplars of a new paradigm—the super-involved parenting team for whom being equally engaged in the minutiae of their children’s lives is paramount. Perhaps this is what has been misconstrued by old-school Washington. After all, it is so unlike the way that the White House has traditionally functioned, as a paragon of American family life, complete with a staff that all but invented the idea of standing on ceremony.

Later I bring this up to Anita Dunn, former White House communications director and a consultant on the reelection campaign who has a teenager of her own. “You know,” she says, “they are of a different generation. Most of [the Obamas’] friends have both parents in the workforce, and there is a degree of involvement from both parents in raising the children that simply wasn’t the case earlier. But they also both know what it’s like to be raising kids in this very challenging time—whether it’s video games or Facebook or smart phones. That they are experiencing these things along with so many other American parents gives them a unique perspective on the challenges families face.”

I mention the wintry tableau on Inauguration Day, all four Obamas texting and taking pictures of one another. “Sasha plays basketball with her little team at a community center in my neighborhood,” says Dunn. “My son played there and, you know, there are no bleachers or anything—parents are just standing on the sidelines. And that’s an experience that the president has, just like all those other parents. If I was in a school play, my father would show up. But, you know, he wasn’t at the rehearsals. It is a different model. But I think it has been a valuable thing, to help them break out of the bubble.”

From our 2012 Special Edition Best Dressed Issue: Michelle Obama: A Woman of Substance

A friend of mine with two kids who are just heading off to college pointed out to me recently that Malia and Sasha are on the cusp of that stage in life when parenting requires, as she put it, “elasticity”—and life in the White House seems anything but elastic. “Well, the environment becomes more elastic,” the First Lady says. “The Secret Service has to change the way they do things; they have to become more flexible. And they do. Because they want to make sure that these girls are happy and that they have a normal life. . . . There’s a lot of energy that goes into working with staff, working with agents, working with friends’ parents to figure out how do we, you know, let these kids go to the party and have a sleepover and walk through the city on their own, go to the game. Any parent knows that these are the times when you’re just a scheduler and chauffeur for your kids. And that doesn’t change for us. Ninety percent of our conversation is about these girls: What are they doing? And who’s got what practice? And what birthday party is coming up? And did we get a gift for this person? You know, I mean, it is endless and it gets to be pretty exhausting, and if you take your eye off the ball, that’s when their lives become inelastic,” she says emphatically. “So it requires us to be there and be present so that we can respond and have the system respond to their needs. . . . And he’s doing it while still dealing with Syria and health care. He’s as up on every friend, every party, every relationship. . . . And if you’re out at dinner every night, you miss those moments where you can check in and just figure them out when they’re ready to share with you.”

The Obamas’ unusually close partnership and decision-making process started long before they had children. It is now part of legend that when Michelle Robinson decided to leave her cushy office at a corporate Chicago law firm to go work at City Hall for Valerie Jarrett, then deputy chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley, she asked Jarrett to have dinner with her then-fiancé before making the leap. When I ask Jarrett if she could offer any insight into how life in the White House has affected the Obamas’ relationship, she says, “They had a very good marriage going in, but it strengthened it because, well, it’s tested it. He has had some really, really tough moments in the White House, and the fact that his partner in this journey has been so steadfastly in his corner and never wavered, it teaches you every day to appreciate what you have. When you’ve had a really tough day and had to make the kinds of literally life-and-death decisions that he’s had to make in the Oval Office, to come home and know you’re safe and that your children are being well taken care of and you feel totally nurtured. . . . We joke about this: He goes home for dinner and no one’s interested in his day. They want to talk about their day. And that is such a relief. And she manages that for him.”

Find out more about Michelle Obama at Voguepedia.com.

When I paraphrase Jarrett’s observation for the president and First Lady, he shifts in his seat and leans forward. “Well, what is true is that, first and foremost, Michelle thinks about the girls. And pretty much everything else from Michelle’s perspective right now is secondary. And rightly so. She is a great mom. What is also true is Michelle’s had to accommodate”—he pauses for a long while—“a life that”—another pause—“it’s fair to say was not necessarily what she envisioned for herself. She has to put up with me. And my schedule and my stresses. And she’s done a great job on that. But I think it would be a mistake to think that my wife, when I walk in the door, is, Hey, honey, how was your day? Let me give you a neck rub. It’s not as if Michelle is thinking in terms of, How do I cater to my husband? I think it’s much more, We’re a team, and how do I make sure that this guy is together enough that he’s paying attention to his girls and not forgetting the basketball game that he’s supposed to be going to on Sunday? So she’s basically managing me quite effectively—that’s what it comes down to. I’m sure Valerie might have made it sound more romantic.” The First Lady, who has been staring at her lap through this entire answer, finally looks up and laughs.

It almost comes as a relief to see the president, so famous for his cool, get a little defensive. I bring up what someone described as his “Hawaiian mellowness” and ask the First Lady to describe this aspect of her husband. “I’ve tried to explain this guy to people over the years, but there is a calmness to him that is just . . . it has been a consistent part of his character. Which is why I think he is uniquely suited for this challenge—because there is a steadiness. And maybe it’s because of his Hawaiian upbringing—you go to Hawaii and it’s Chillsville; maybe it was because his life growing up was a little less steady, so he had to create that steadiness for himself . . . but he is that person, in all situations, over the course of these last four years, from watching the highs and lows of health-care reform to dealing with two very contentious, challenging elections. . . . The most you get from him is ‘You know, that is gonna be tough. . . .’ There are a lot of times I can’t tell how his day went. Unless I really dig down. Because when he walks through that door, he can let go of it all. And it just doesn’t penetrate his soul. And that’s the beautiful thing for me to see as his wife. That was one of the things I was worried about: How would politics affect this very decent, genuine, noble individual? And there is just something about his spirit that allows all that stuff to stay on the outside.”

Someone recently introduced me to the concept of “borrowed functioning,” something that successful couples do without even realizing it. When I describe the concept to the Obamas and confess that my partner of fifteen years is an unflappable, hard-to-read Midwesterner and that I am an emotional hothead from Jersey, they both laugh and gamely play along.

“Well, patience and calm I’m borrowing,” says the First Lady. “Or trying to mirror. I’ve learned that from my husband, that sort of, you know, ability to not get too high or too low with changes and bumps in the road . . . to do more breathing in and just going with it. I’m learning that every day. And to the extent that I’ve made changes in my life, it’s just sort of stepping back and seeing a change not as something to guard against but as a wonderful addition . . . that can make life fun and unexpected. Oftentimes, it’s the way we react to change that is the thing that determines the overall experience. So I’ve learned to let go and enjoy it and take it in and not take things too personally.”

Without missing a beat, the president says, “And what Michelle has done is to remind me every day of the virtues of order.” The First Lady lets out a big laugh. “Being on time. Hanging up your clothes. Being intentional about planning time with your kids. In some ways I think . . . we’re very different people, and some of that’s temperamental, some of it is how we grew up. Michelle grew up in a model nuclear family: mom, dad, brother. . . . She just has these deep, wonderful roots. When you go back to Chicago, she’s got family everywhere. . . . There’s just a warmth and a sense of belonging. And you know, that’s not how I grew up. I had this far-flung family, father left at a very young age, a stepfather who ended up passing away as well. My mother was this wonderful spirit, and she was adventurous but not always very well organized. And, so, what that means is that I’m more comfortable with change and adventure and trying new things, but the downside of it is, sometimes—particularly when we were early on in our marriage—I wasn’t always thinking about the fact that my free-spirited ways might be having an impact on the person I’m with. And conversely, early in our marriage, Michelle provided this sense of stability and clarity and certainty about things, but sometimes she resisted trying something new just because it might seem a little scary or push her out of her comfort zone. I think what we’ve learned from each other is that sense of. . . .”

“Balance,” she says.

“There’s no doubt I’m a better man having spent time with Michelle. I would never say that Michelle’s a better woman, but I will say she’s a little more patient.”

“I would say I’m a better woman. You couldn’t say it.”

“I couldn’t say it,” he says.

The First Lady looks at me: “It’s good that he learned not to say that.” And then turns and looks at him and smiles. “Don’t say that.”

Being around the Obamas, I am struck by a few things: They are both tall and great-looking, and his hair is not so gray. In fact, neither of them looks like they’re on either side of 50. He has beautiful hands, with long, slender fingers that make his wedding band seem enormous. Her Midwestern accent is pronounced, and his legendary Hawaiian mellowness is in full flower for most of the interview—though he is also capable of more than a little swagger. When I ask the First Lady if her husband’s mellow nature is what gets interpreted as “aloof,” she says, “Absolutely. I mean, I don’t know what people expect to see in a president. Maybe they want him to yell and scream at somebody at some point. Sometimes I’d like him to do that.” She laughs and looks at him. “But that’s just not how he deals with stress. And I think that’s something we want in our leaders.”

“It is true that I don’t get too high or I don’t get too low, day to day,” the president says. “Partly because I try to bring to the job a longer-term time frame. I’m a history buff, and I know that big changes take time. But I also know that, setting politics aside, usually things are never as good as you think they are or as bad as you think they are. And that has served me well temperamentally.”

But as the First Lady observes, “all it takes is watching him spend time on a rope line” for you to see the emotion and the connection. I got to watch the president doing just that two days earlier, in a high school gymnasium in Las Vegas after his speech on immigration, and what was unmistakable was the genuine pleasure he took in hugging and handshaking and saying “I love you back!” to the several hundred people who were screaming and crying as they reached out to touch him. It seems that he loves the attention, sure—but it struck me that he loves it to the right degree. How did the First Lady put it? “It doesn’t penetrate his soul.”

Everyone I spoke with about the Obamas said the same thing: What you see is what you get. “The president, when he goes to an event, that is the same Barack Obama who’s in a meeting,” says Dunn. “There really isn’t a divide between their private and public personas.” The First Lady’s chief of staff, Tina Tchen, says, “When people ask me, ‘What’s she really like?’ I say, ‘Well, you’re seeing it. That is exactly who she is and what she’s like.’ ”

As White House Press Secretary Jay Carney reminded me, the Obamas went from relative anonymity to worldwide superfame—potent symbols of once-unimaginable progress—in the blink of an eye. Most couples take the long road to the White House; the Obamas’ zip-line arrival left them no time to develop the public personas presumed to be essential for surviving a life subject to that level of scrutiny. “There is a distance that naturally happens as you rise up the political ladder,” says Jarrett. “And I think because his rise happened so fast there was no time to create that distance.” To illustrate, she tells me a story about the time in 2004 when she was vacationing with the Obamas on Martha’s Vineyard, shortly after state senator Obama gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston that launched him onto the national stage. “He went out for a jog,” says Jarrett, “and he came back and he said, ‘Can you believe it? Someone took a photograph of me.’ He was shocked. And we were like, ‘Really?’ He and Michelle went back to southern Illinois and suddenly they were rock stars.”

The president chooses to see their rapid ascent as an advantage. “I think that’s been very helpful . . .” he says. “We were pretty much who we are by the time I hit the national scene. We didn’t grow up or come of age under a spotlight. We were anonymous folks. I was a state senator, but nobody knows who a state senator is. So most of our 30s and 40s were as a typical middle-class family. . . . That really didn’t change until I was 45 years old. And there’s something about having lived a normal life and raised kids.” Here he slips into the syntax of his younger self. “We had to figure out how to make a mortgage, payin’ the bills, goin’ to Target, and freakin’ out when . . . the woman who’s looking after your girls while Michelle’s working suddenly decides she’s quittin’. . . . All those experiences made us who we were, so that by the time this thing hit, it was hard for us to. . . .”

“Be different people,” says the First Lady. “And I think we are accountable to each other for being who we are. There’s no way I could walk in the door and be somebody different from who I’ve been with this man for 20-some-odd years. He would laugh me out of the house!” She goes on, “And we are also blessed with families who hold us accountable.”

“Exactly,” says the president.

This reminds me of something the First Lady’s brother told me. “I played basketball in England for two years,” said Craig Robinson, “and I didn’t realize it, but apparently, I developed somewhat of an accent, and my sister and my father killed me when I came back. They were like, ‘What happened? You go to England and you have an accent?’ It would have been the same thing if Michelle had gotten to be the First Lady and started acting differently. She would have heard it from me and my mom.”

“My mother doesn’t do interviews,” says the First Lady, “but let me tell you: She is not long on pretense. She’s the first one to remind us who we are. And it’s been very helpful having her living with us. . . . We can check reality against her sensibilities.”

“Now, in fairness,” says the president, “there is one thing that’s changed.” The First Lady looks at him. “What’s that?”

“Which is, I used to only have, like, two suits,” he says.

Now you must have dozens, I say.

“Thank God,” she says. “Now, let me tell you: This is the man who still boasts about, This khaki pair of pants I’ve had since I was 20.” The president throws his head back, laughing. “And I’m like, ‘You don’t want to brag about that.’ ” Jay Carney and the young staffers from the White House press office, who are all sitting on a sofa on the other side of the room, crack up.

“Michelle’s like Beyoncé in that song,” says the president. “ ‘Let me upgrade ya!’ She upgraded me.”

“The girls and I are always rooting when he wears, like, a stripe. They’re like, ‘Dad! Oh, you look so handsome. Oh, stripes! You go!’ ”

Taking fashion advice from the First Lady wouldn’t be the worst thing the president could do. After all, she has inspired a modern definition of effortless American chic. Later she tells me this about her relationship to fashion: “I always say that women should wear whatever makes them feel good about themselves. That’s what I always try to do. . . . I also believe that if you’re comfortable in your clothes it’s easy to connect with people and make them feel comfortable as well. In every interaction that I have with people, I always want to show them my most authentic self.”

The week I am in D.C. happens to be Secretary Hillary Clinton’s last week at the State Department, and just outside Valerie Jarrett’s office, glowing on the computer screen of her longtime assistant, Katherine Branch, is a photograph taken this very day of the president and the secretary: He is signing a presidential memorandum promoting gender equality and women’s issues globally as a priority at the Department of State, a longtime cause of Clinton’s. When I remind Jarrett of the bruising primary and the rancor that colored those days before Obama nominated Clinton to his Cabinet, she laughs and then brings up the recent joint interview the former rivals gave to 60 Minutes. “I saw him yesterday and I said, ‘Did you watch the interview?’ And he goes, ‘No, I lived the interview.’ And I said, ‘You gotta watch it. What you probably aren’t aware of is how the affection that you two have for one another just came through completely.’ And he said, ‘Well, of course it did. I love her.’ ”

As we talk, Jarrett draws my attention to an elaborately framed pair of documents on the wall above the table where we are sitting. It is a birthday gift from the president, given to her just nine days after he won reelection. I get up to study them. On the left is the “petition for universal suffrage,” dated January 29, 1866; on the right, a proposal from the House of Representatives, dated May 19, 1919: “Amendment to the Constitution extending the right of suffrage to women.”

“It’s, like, the real thing!” says Jarrett. “Signed by Susan B. Anthony!” The day she opened the present in the Oval Office, she stared at it for a minute, and as the significance of the gift dawned on her, she said, “Where did you get this?” And he said, “I’m the president. I can get things.” Reminding his best friend of the legacy of those women who have come before is thoughtful, but its underlying message is echt-Obama: Progress takes time. (Fifty-three years in this case.) When I mention this to the president, he lights up. “We talk about this all the time in the White House,” he says. “In some ways the changes that have taken place in this country are amazingly rapid. There are very few examples of countries where you go, basically in one person’s lifetime, from segregation to an African-American president. And yet, we live in a culture that is impatient, and so, if things don’t happen in one month or one year, folks start wondering what’s taking so long.”

David Axelrod no longer works in the White House, but there was no more beleaguered presence on television during the first term, doggedly defending his boss against the ideologues in his own party. “I was struck,” he says, “that there were so many who were unhappy about how long, for example, it took to end the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, and there were some who felt that the health-care law was insufficient. And, you know, hanging on the wall in the Oval Office was the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a reminder that there was great disquiet among many in [Lincoln’s] Republican base that he didn’t sign it immediately. And there were those who felt it wasn’t enveloping enough. But it was what he could do, and it was momentous. And you are reminded of that constantly in that building, and it’s comforting to remember that you can only judge these things in the fullness of time.”

What’s astonishing is just how suddenly such liberal-dream issues like gun control, immigration reform, and marriage equality have dominated the outset of Obama’s second term. I point out to Axelrod that these would seem to be perfect lessons in presidential patience: how unseen events can create, out of thin air, political opportunities over once intractable issues. “There’s no question about it,” he says. “We have a chance now to get immigration done, whereas we didn’t have that chance in the last four years. The awareness of the gaping holes in our gun laws is much greater now as a result of the tragedy in Newtown. But you have to grab that moment. That’s how progress is made. And the longer you serve in the presidency, the more you learn that.”

Though President Obama faces moral quagmires of every imaginable sort in every part of the world, from the Keystone oil pipeline to drone strikes to peace in the Middle East, in the big picture, he will no doubt be remembered for ordering the assassination of Osama bin Laden and ending the war in Iraq and hopefully Afghanistan. But if he accomplishes even part of the agenda he laid out in his inaugural address, he has the chance to go down in history as one of the greatest domestic-policy presidents ever. The issues that he’s prioritized—health care, reviving the economy, education, and now, gun control, immigration reform, and marriage equality—are first and foremost family issues. The First Lady’s initiatives—military families and childhood nutrition and health—likewise are about as domestic as you can get. If you think about it, who better than the man who can’t wait to get home to his wife and kids every night at 6:30—the Dad-in-Chief—to carry the flag on what the future of the American Family should look like?

“Well, I’ll tell you,” says President Obama, his wife looking at him with a beatific smile as our interview winds down, “everything we have done has been viewed through the lens of family. And I mean family broadly conceived. I was raised by a single mom. We have kids in our family who were adopted. We have people from every race, every economic stratum; we have gay and lesbian couples who have been part of our lives for years. And all of them, what’s consistent is that sense that we look out for each other. And that’s the lens through which we’ve always viewed our public service. . . . Broadening this fierce sense that we have of: I’ve got your back. Beyond just the immediate family to the larger American family, and making sure everybody’s included and making sure that everybody’s got a seat at the table. . . .

“The work I did in the first couple of years to make sure we didn’t go into a Great Depression—that was family policy. Both of us, given our upbringings, know what it’s like when money is tight. Both of us know when a parent feels disappointed because they can’t do everything they can for their kids and the stresses and strains and the emotions that arise out of that. So, making sure people have jobs, making sure the economy is working, making sure that people’s savings aren’t dissipating—those have all been family policy as well. But there’s no doubt that as we stabilize the economy, part of what I’ve tried to argue, and certainly a major theme in my inauguration speech, was this idea that we’re all family, that we have obligations to each other, that we don’t just think about ourselves. This is a common enterprise. If I live in a city where I know kids are getting a good education, my life is better, even if they’re not my kids. If I know that women are getting paid the same as men for doing the same work, then when I have daughters, I’m going to feel confident that they’re going to be able to fulfill their dreams and ambitions. If I am looking out for that same-sex couple, making sure that they’ve got the same rights as everybody else does, then I’m confident that they’ll look out for somebody in my family who has some sort of difference, that they’re not going to be discriminated against, because that same principle applies. And that idea really is sort of at the heart of, not just my presidency, but who I am. And Michelle has applied that same idea with her work in Joining Forces and thinking about kids and nutrition. Look, they’re all our kids! They’re all our families.”

The day after my interview with the Obamas, I head back to the White House to attend a presentation ceremony for the National Science & Technology Medals laureates and their families. The Marine Corps band is playing jazz in the Entrance Hall, just inside the North Portico, as the attendees mill around, sipping soda and juice. Trumpets blare, “Ruffles and Flourishes” plays, and the president makes his entrance into the East Room. “If there is one idea that sets this country apart,” he says from his blue podium, “one idea that makes us different from every other nation on Earth, it’s that here in America, success does not depend on where you were born or what your last name is. . . .”

After the presentation, I am taken into the Blue Room, where there will be an opportunity for the medal recipients to pose for photographs with the forty-fourth president of the United States of America. Word comes that it will be another 20 minutes, and so a handful of staffers and I hang in the back of the room, scrolling through our BlackBerrys. Suddenly, a side door opens, and there he is, by himself, unannounced. The president spots me standing in the back of the room and shouts, “JonaTHAN!” It is how I imagine he might say my name on the court right after I sank a three-pointer just before the buzzer to win the game.

All the technology-medal recipients, most of them men in their 70s and 80s, are lined up on either side of the president for a group photo, which the president immediately begins to art-direct himself. You two get on this side. . . . We need one more person over here. . . . You stand next to me. That man is Art Rosenfeld, known in his field as “the godfather of efficient energy.” He is 86 and frail, and as they wait for some of the others to arrive, Rosenfeld struggles a bit. Just as the other men are being hustled into the room and lined up, Obama steadies Rosenfeld and then leans down and sweetly says in his ear, in a tone that every loving father in the world would recognize: “I gotcha.”

– March 14, 2013 12:01a.m.

 

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JAMES Randall-A Righteous BLACK BROTHER Fights For OUR BLACK Rights!

http://www.blackiowa.org/education/childrens-oral-history-project/stories/james-randall/. 

 

James Randall, Stead Family Professor of English
B.S., North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University
M.A., Carnegie Mellon University

Professor Randall’s offerings include courses in African-American and African literature; he also teaches African-American history. He has been a participant in the project of establishing the African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa (opening in Cedar Rapids in September 2003)
ames Randall

Interviewed by Living Waters History Makers
Region: Central Iowa
Category: Civil Rights

The store people also didn’t want us there sitting in either, and they would try to do things to force us away like pretend that they were spraying for flies and insects and spray on us on that occasion. Some of the rowdy people in the crowd would threaten us, threaten to fight us in some ways, too. But, we had gone through some training before we actually did that. And so it was overall a very useful experience. — James Randall

Biography

James (Samm) Randall, Professor of English and African American Studies at Coe College, taught at Coe from 1969 to 2010. He grew up in Bolton, North Carolina, working in the fields and attending segregated schools. He has studied at North Carolina A&T State University, Carnegie-Mellon University, Indiana University, Washington State University, and he has participated in summer-study programs at other universities over the years. He holds a Master’s degree from Carnegie-Mellon and is a published author. He has also taught African American literature courses at the University of Iowa. His teaching areas include African American Literature, African Literature, American Literature, English Literature, Caribbean Literature, and African American History.

Transcript

Shawndell: Hello my name is Shawndell Young and it is May 4th, 2009. And today I will be interviewing Professor Randall. So let’s get it started. So where were you born?

James Randall: I was born in North Carolina, a little town called Bolton, which is in the southeastern corner of the state of North Carolina. It’s about twenty miles up from the South Carolina border and about twenty-three miles in from the Atlantic Ocean, in an area that is known as the Green Swamp of North Carolina.

Shawndell: Where is home now?

James Randall: Home is here in Cedar Rapids.

Shawndell: How long have you lived in Cedar Rapids?

James Randall: I’ve lived in Cedar Rapids for forty years. I came here in 1969 to teach at Coe College. And I’ve been here for most of that time, although, I did take a leave at one point. I lived for a few years in Marion and now back in Cedar Rapids. Some years ago, I took a leave for three years and went out to the state of Washington, at Washington State, where I was doing some work at Washington State University.

Shawndell: So what brought you here?

James Randall: I came here to teach literature at Coe. My initial plan was to teach here for one year. So I came up here in 1969, I was going to be here for one year and it turned out that I was here just for one year on that first occasion. Then I went out and spent a year at University of Colorado working out there. And then following year I was invited to come back here to teach at Coe. So I’ve been here since that time.

Shawndell: Moving! So where did you go for school?

James Randall: Well, my school experiences have been varied. My, course my elementary school experience was in Bolton, North Carolina, which was at a sort of an ancient wooden school that had no running water and had outdoor toilets and had no central heating. But something began to happen, I am sure you and people of your generation have studied about the Brown Vs Board of Education school case which of course was finished in 1954. And around that time suddenly North Carolina began refurbishing schools for African Americans-it was a segregated system- because the idea, as I felt at the time and also felt later, was they, what they wanted to try to show that we did have separate but equal facilities. So we suddenly got a new school with central heating, with running water, built out of bricks, most of the, even a cafeteria, most of the amenities that were needed at that time. So I finished that school and then I went to high school, sort of a consolidated high school, also a segregated school for the black students. And I went to high school there and eventually I went to college at North Carolina A & E State University, which at that time was an all black school, too. All the teachers black, all the students black, all the administrators black, and I graduated from that, from that college. This was the college where the modern sit-in movement started. They started there a year before I became a student there. But when I went there, activity was still taking place.

Shawndell: So what did you do for entertainment back then?

James Randall: Well when I was very small. We did, I guess you would call it inexpensive games. We played a lot of stickball. We played softball. We played, when someone got a bicycle; we would ride the bicycle to death. In the winter we would make bows and arrows, and which we called ourselves hunting. And now it might not be considered not the nicest thing to do but our target would be birds which we would hunt and sometimes get and sometimes dress and have them prepared for eating. But, we did other kinds of things, too. One of the things that happened in that area was, we began to work at a very young age and so even small children had certain kinds of farm related jobs to do: hoeing crops, harvesting crops, chores that were assigned to us in a number of ways. So a lot of the summer activity and often after school activity was associated with work. When I was very small even attending my first grades, cotton was still grown in that area and after school we would sometimes pick cotton and turn it in and weigh it and get paid a certain amount, a certain, few cents per pound and so that took a good deal of the activity as well.

Shawndell: How was the Civil Rights Movement helped you and affected you?

James Randall: Well the Civil Rights Movement affected me a great deal. I say sometimes that people of my generation and a little bit after me, we were sort of born in the Civil Rights Movement, born in a civil rights situation. You have to remember that this was strict segregation at that time. And North Carolina was also a strict segregationist state which meant that African Americans did not have equal rights, which also meant that most of the politicians were against democracy for African Americans. So there was a lot of work to be done in order to get some things changed. Civil Rights Movement meant that I went to not equal schools, that our parents didn’t have equal job opportunities, that the state conspired to keep us poor and conspired to keep us not as well educated. We couldn’t attend University of North Carolina, nor Duke University, nor Wake Forrest University, nor North Carolina State for which our tax money supported in a lot of ways. So we were really being done in a very bad way by the authorities at the time. So the Civil Rights Movement meant a lot to me. When we began to get wind of how things were changing and needed to be changed. I mentioned the Brown versus Board of Education case. I remember when the public buses were integrated in North Carolina for the first time, for example. I remember, when of course, I remember, people my age remember, too, the presidential election of 1960, between President Kennedy and the challenger, and the other candidate for the Republicans, Richard Nixon and in the introduction of Civil Rights support becomes more common in the political sphere of things. So it meant a great deal. It meant a lot.

Shawndell: Can you explain what was segregation for the African American person back then?

James Randall: Well, the situation was really based on a Supreme Court case that took place much earlier, in 1896, the so-called Plessy vs Ferguson case, which the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was OK as long as there were equal facilities for African Americans-the so-called separate but equal doctrine. And we saw very quickly that things were separate, but they never were equal. Equal facilities were not really provided for and it meant that by law, African Americans got a raw deal from the state government and also from the national government because the national government supported the state governments in their discrimination against us in many ways. And again, education-didn’t have equal education opportunity, for jobs- couldn’t have equal jobs opportunity. In my home county, I couldn’t even go to the county library because it was only for whites. Blacks could not go the county library. And so that’s a blatant example of this discrimination in that way as well, which meant that we couldn’t get certain kinds of jobs, even state jobs we could not get. There were some more menial jobs that were designated for African Americans, but top flight jobs were out of the question at that time. And it meant that therefore, more people were waiting for these changes to occur and we were increasingly aware of them, and that made us more determined to become active, too. And for example the students, the college students who lead and who began the sit-in movement, they were also fed up with a good deal of this activity and they were motivated to do something about it and other students in other places and an increasing number of adults also began to participate directly as well.

Shawndell: So can you describe the role of the African American church back in your day?

James Randell: When I was small, I was involved in church activity especially. My parents were active in the church, especially my father, who was a very active churchman in the AME Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in my hometown. My hometown was very small, about 600 people. But as I think about it there were a lot of churches in that town a lot of African American Churches, maybe seven or eight African American Churches in a very small town. So I participated in Sunday School. When I was very young I became Sunday School secretary, state Sunday School secretary, I guess until I finished high school and went away to college. I remember attending Sunday School conventions that took place yearly. One of my cousins was the pianist. She had a talent for playing piano. And she became the director of the junior choir. So naturally I was a member of junior choir for a number of years as well. There were some other activities that took place, too, some special holiday activities that occurred in the church as well. I remember also some Vacation Bible School experiences began and it was a new idea at the time for our area of the country. But nevertheless, that took place as well.

Shawndell: Have you been involved in any Civil Rights organizations or any like of the NAACP stuff or anything like that?

James Randall: Yes again, because of the area of the country where I lived, practically it couldn’t be avoided just out of natural behavior. But when the sit-in movements began, I was still in high school. And so we decided that, some people in my town decided, that we should participate directly in some of these activates. Well, maybe I was a junior in high school at that time. Our town was so small, that we didn’t have any real facilities to integrate because we just had a little regular General Store. But we did most of our shopping in a town about twenty-five miles away, the town of Wilmington, North Carolina. Most of our big shopping occurred there. So we decided to organize and to join the demonstrations that were taking place in Wilmington. So we organized and we decided that we needed a formal organization. So it was formal organized and I was elected president of the group. So before dinner time each Saturday we would go to Wilmington and we would join in the sit-ins that were taking place in Wilmington. We had some varied experiences there, some not so nice experiences, of course some people in the crowd didn’t want us there. The store people also didn’t want us there sitting in either and they would try to do things to force us away like pretend that they were spraying for flies and insects and spray on us on that occasion. Some of the rowdy people in the crowd would threaten us, threaten to fight us in some ways, too. But, we had gone through some training before we actually did that. And so it was overall a very useful experience. Later in college, I also participated in some civil rights demonstrations. And even after I finished my undergraduate work at North Carolina A&T, I moved to Pittsburgh to attend a college there. And activity was taking place in that city. Even in that northern industrial city, some things needed to be changed there as well. And James King had even later, for example when I went to another university, ____University, and later to Washington State University, one organization that I became involved with was the organization concerned with liberation in South Africa, so in effect, civil rights for South Africa on more of a global scale. And so I think that part of that interest and activity generated in my case early from participating in the sit-ins back in North Carolina.

Shawndell: What would you say is one of your best…like your best accomplishments?

James Randall: Well I think working in education for forty years. I think that, to endure that and still fill enthused about it. And I’ve had some good students who have come through the process. And so I think very, very, very positively on that. Sometimes I hear from former students and they are doing progressive things. And so I count that as one of the best things.

Shawndell: What has been one of your happiest time, memories?

James Randall: Happiest memories. I guess there are some standard ones, such as some of my memories with my wife, with my family, with my North Carolina relatives, with visiting some other places. Living in Colorado was nice for a year. Visiting the West Indies was also good. Taking a trip to Africa was good. And so those are fond memories.

Shawndell: What would you change about the outcome of your life right now?

James Randall: That’s a big question. I’m not sure what I would change about the outcome of my life. I think that in so many ways, of course, life is still being engaged. And so we go through it, and try to do positive things that we can. But sometimes in finagling with the past a little bit it would change so many other things as well. In some ways, I think I would, I would have liked to have been more productive, more steadily at some times. I think I have been relatively productive over time. But maybe if I had gotten, maybe even started earlier, maybe if I had been able to, I don’t know, get though college a couple of years earlier then so much more might have been done. But this is, you know, fantasy. I would like to have traveled in more places than I have. I‘ve done a lot of travel across the states. I would like to have done more world travel.

Shawndell: I also have one more question. You’ve talked about one of your happiest times. Which would be one of your worst times of your life?

James Randall: A very painful time would have been the year 1972. In that year my father died in February; my grandmother died in May; my mother died in September. So within a relatively short period of time, these are the people who have sort of molded me, and that was naturally a painful time not just for me, but for my brothers and sisters as well. So that stands out.

Shawndell: So do you have any questions that you think I have not answered that you think we should know?

James Randall: I suppose we could ramble a long time about a lot of different things. I think that over my years, I’ve seen a lot of positive changes occur in society in general. And now which gives me some, more than just hope, but some belief that things are likely to continue to improve in some positive ways. As a world and as a society we have dirtied our hands with a lot of things. I’m glad to see now that we seem to be more determined to clean up behind ourselves more than we have done in the past, more accountably, than we have done the past. So, I hope that that trend will continue.

Shawndell: Alright, well, thank you for letting me interview you.

James Randall: Alright, thank you.

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PETE O’NEAL-Exiled BLACK PANTHER Finds FREEDOM in Africa!-JOIN HIM BLACK MAN and BACK HOME TO THE MOTHERLAND!

Former Black Panther patches together purpose in Africa exile





In America, Pete O’Neal was an angry man, an ex-con who found a kind of religion in 1960s black nationalism. In a Tanzania village, he’s been a champion of children.

Many of the young orphans gather round to watch, and lend their support, as Pete O’Neal has fresh ink applied to his fading black panther tattoo. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

By Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times

January 29, 2012

Reporting from Imbaseni, Tanzania — The fugitive shuffles to his computer and begins typing out his will. He is about to turn 71, and it is time. “My life,” he writes, “has been a wild and wicked ride….”

All Pete O’Neal has amassed fits on two pages: A small brick home with a sheet-metal roof. A few road-beaten vehicles. A cluster of bunkhouses and classrooms he spent decades building, brick by scavenged brick, near the slopes of Mt. Meru’s volcanic cone. Everything will go to his wife of 42 years, Charlotte, and to a few trusted workers.

He prints out the will late one Saturday morning and settles into his reclining chair to check the spelling. He signs his name. Then, to guarantee its authenticity, he finds an ink pad, rolls his thumb across it, and affixes his thumbprint to the bottom of the page.

“I think that’ll do it,” he says.

Map: Imbaseni, Tanzania

Photos: A former Black Panther in Africa exile champions kids

When last he walked America’s streets, O’Neal was a magnetic young man possessed of bottomless anger. He was an ex-con who’d found a kind of religion in late-’60s black nationalism, a vain, violent street hustler reborn in a Black Panther uniform of dark sunglasses, beret and leather jacket. With pitiless, knife-sharp diction, he spoke of sending police to their graves.

This morning, he sits in his living room uncapping medicine bottles. A pill for high blood pressure. Another for the pain in his back and his bad knee. An aspirin to thin his blood. Time is catching him, like the lions that pursue him implacably through his nightmares, their leashes held by policemen.

He pushes through his screen door into the brisk morning air. A slightly stooped, thickset man with long, graying dreadlocks, he moves unsteadily down the irregular stone steps he built into the sloping dirt. He makes his way past the enormous avocado tree, past the horse barn with its single slow-footed tenant, Bullet, past the shaded dining pavilion.

His four-acre compound bustles with visitors, many of them preparing for a memorial service for Geronimo Pratt, a former Panther who died in his farmhouse down the road, his affairs untidy, his will unfinished, his death a sharp message to O’Neal not to put off the paperwork any longer.

Most of O’Neal’s big dreams have faded over the years, or come to feel silly. Like beating the 42-year-old federal gun charges that caused him to flee the United States. Like the global socialist revolution that he was supposed to help lead. Like returning home to the streets of his Midwestern childhood. Like winning citizenship in his adopted African country, and the prize that’s eluded him on two continents: the feeling of belonging somewhere.

This is what’s left: the shell of a 20-year-old Toyota Coaster bus that bulks before him in a clearing. It’s a stripped-and-gutted 29-seater that he bought for $11,500 after years of squirreling away money. It came with dents, a cracked windshield, a peeling paint job, rotting floorboards, frayed seats.

Still, it seemed like a good deal until he found the engine had to be replaced, costing an additional $4,000. He’s hired mechanics and craftsmen to rebuild the bus nearly from the chassis up, and a few of them are milling around now, informing him in Swahili of their progress.

He rarely leaves home anymore. Crowds jangle his nerves; traffic makes his hands shake. Yet nothing feels more urgent than readying this bus for an improbable 300-mile trip to the edge of his adopted continent.

A group of American high school students, mostly white, is gathering in the dining pavilion. They’ve been coming by the busload for years, many drawn by the intrigue of staying with a former Panther. They pay him $30 a night for a bunk. The money — together with sporadic donations from sympathetic friends here and abroad — pays the bills.

Pete O’Neal in his Black Panther days. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

The students pause before the big poster featuring O’Neal as a fierce young militant, rifle in arms, Charlotte at his side. It’s hard to reconcile that image with the grandfatherly host who greets them in Swahili as if they were old friends, booming, “Karibu!” Welcome!

He asks where they’re from. A girl says Missouri, which happens to be his home state, and he hugs her theatrically. Everyone laughs. “All of you are welcome,” he says, “even if you’re from strange places.”

He plants them before documentary footage about his life. It’s easier than explaining the whole story himself. Where would he start? His childhood in segregated Kansas City, Mo., where the amusement park admitted black kids once a year, a day so cherished that they went in their Sunday best? Should he start with the stabbings and shootings in the projects where he grew up?

“I lived in the streets,” he says. “I didn’t have time to be happy.”

After one arrest, he was given a stark choice: reform school or the armed services. The Navy threw him out after he plunged a butcher knife into another sailor’s chest over an insult, nearly killing him. He drifted in and out of lockup. He pimped girls in three states. He wore $300 Italian suits and a blond wave in his processed hair.

To the FBI, the Panthers were homegrown terrorists who romanticized lawbreaking with overheated Marxist rhetoric. To O’Neal, who founded the Kansas City chapter of the party in early 1969, it represented a lifeline out of an abyss of drugs and aimlessness. He blazed with purpose: End racism and class inequality, fast.

“I would like very much to shoot my way into the House of Representatives,” he declared in a televised interview, angry at a congressman who was investigating the Panthers. Pressed to clarify, he added: “I mean it literally.”

He stormed into a Senate subcommittee hearing in Washington, screaming accusations that the Kansas City police chief was funneling weapons to white supremacist groups.

Shortly afterward, a federal judge sentenced him to a four-year prison term on a conviction of transporting a shotgun across state lines. Out on bail, he decided to run. He and Charlotte fled in 1970 to Sweden, then to Algeria, and finally, in late 1972, to Tanzania, whose socialist government welcomed left-wing militants.

The O’Neals had $700. After a few years they bought a patch of inhospitable brush and volcanic rock in Imbaseni, a cobra-infested village of thatched-roof shacks in the country’s remote northern interior. They were up before dawn, dancing with Al Jarreau on the tape deck, gathering locals for the day’s work. Their two young African-born children, Malcolm and Stormy, carried bricks and water buckets.

Soon they had four walls, a roof, and little else. Plastic hung over the windows. No toilets

Soon they had four walls, a roof, and little else. Plastic hung over the windows. No toilets. It was the back-to-Africa experience so many black Americans talked about, minus the option of escape. They learned to grow corn and raise chickens. He jarred pickle relish, smoked sausages and bottled barbecue sauce for sale to local shops.

His temper was thunderous. When he heard something in Swahili that sounded offensive — such as wa-negro, a neutral description of black Americans implying no malice — he would scream, ready to fight.

“We were cowboys then,” says Ikaweba Bunting, 63, a Compton-raised college professor who arrived in Tanzania in the 1970s and stayed for years. “We were big and hard-walking and hard-talking, and ready to beat people up — the whole street culture.”

Exile was supposed to be temporary. O’Neal corresponded with other Panthers and planned to return home to help lead the revolution. He watched from abroad as the party collapsed from infighting, arrests and an FBI campaign of surveillance and sabotage. People stopped talking about revolution. Radicals found new lives.

O’Neal’s exile became permanent. His fury abated. Some of it was age. Some of it was Tanzania, where strangers always materialized to push your Land Rover out of the mud, and where conflicts were resolved in community meetings in which everyone got to speak, interminably.

“It is so laid back, so reasonable, that to be otherwise makes you look, even to yourself, like a damn fool,” O’Neal says.

Around that first crude brick structure, the fugitive improvised a little island of hope. He built a small recording studio for musicians and a workshop for artists. He gathered castoff computers and invited locals to come learn. He sank a well and opened the spigot to the village. It was, as he saw it, in the spirit of the free breakfast program he’d run as a Panther.

“He’s had a chance to grow in a way that very few people get here,” says his brother Brian O’Neal, 58, who lives in Kansas City.

Had he stayed in the States, Pete O’Neal believes, he’d be long dead from a shootout or street fight.

If exile saved him, it has also meant a life in which the sense of being a stranger never goes away.

“There’s always a feeling of not being completely part of this culture. I know I am of a different tribe,” he says. “People like me here, they love me, but I’m always other than.”

Back in his house, he relaxes with a few shots of Jim Beam. He keeps a shotgun for snakes and a wall full of books. In mock-stentorian tones, he ridicules his early blood-soaked rhetoric. He puts a hand over his face, like an actor reminded of an embarrassing role, and says, “That was a man who was trying to find himself. He was trying to shed his skin, and emerge brand-new. I think he overstated and overacted.”

For his radicalism itself, however, he won’t apologize, even if — as he suspects — it is the one thing that might gain him safe entry back into the States.

“They will never convince me in my life,” he says, “that what I was doing wasn’t right.”

All the orphans get a razored haircut — both boys and girls — and wash off the loose stubble under cold water at the tap. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

A few years back, an ambition seized him. The village had scores of destitute children, orphans from dirt-floor shacks and subsistence farms. He collected donations and built a concrete-block bunkhouse down near his tomato and pepper garden.

He spread word that he had room for a few kids. More than 100 appeared at his door, many shoeless. He had to send the majority away. The most desperate, a couple dozen, he informally adopted.

Now, they roam his grounds in lively packs, playing four square on the basketball court. They sleep in rows under malaria nets. Volunteers and a few staff members watch over the children and give them English and computer classes.

They call him Babu. Grandfather.

How big is the ocean?

So big you can’t see across it.

Really?

So big you can go for weeks and never see land.

He shows them a globe.

See how much more ocean there is than land?

So is it bigger than Tanzania?

American high school students gather around Pete O’Neal in his compound’s dining pavilion. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

The American high school students have questions, so he takes a seat before them. It’s late, and he’s weary, but this is his living. They want to know what country he belongs to, exactly.

He has no passport, he explains, and the Tanzanian government has rebuffed his efforts to become a citizen. “I’m not sure where the hell I belong at this particular point,” he tells the students.

For years, he sought a way home. He found American lawyers willing to work for free to fight the gun charges. He would like to see his 91-year-old mother in Kansas City one last time.

His longing for the States comes at funny moments, as when he sees shrimp sailing through the air in Red Lobster commercials. He still dreams about the Kansas City he knew as a child, the bakeries and the public swimming pool and the ladies with their hats. But the city seems wrong, somehow, becoming weirdly unrecognizable.

In other dreams, he finds himself fleeing from things he can’t see or name, urging his wife, “Charlotte, you gotta run!”

He regards his complex of bunkhouses, workshops and classrooms as “socialism in microcosm,” he tells the students, though doctrinaire Marxism left him disillusioned. People, he concluded, are basically selfish.

Have his views on violence changed?

“I don’t have the particular type of courage that would allow me to turn the other cheek.”

One fresh-faced girl says she’s been in Tanzania a week, and thinks it might be neat to move here. Does he recommend it?

Patiently, he replies: “It ain’t that kind of party.”

Of late, he tells the students, he’s been haunted by the deaths of other exiled Panthers. One died in France last February, another in Zambia in October.

Then there was his close friend Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, the Panthers’ former field marshal, who spent 27 years behind bars on a murder conviction before a California judge overturned it.

In 2002, Pratt bought a big farmhouse nearby with his false-imprisonment settlement, and O’Neal felt as though he’d rediscovered a lost brother. They drove through the village listening to Richard Pryor CDs, laughing until they wheezed and tears rolled down their cheeks.

Pratt was hospitalized with high blood pressure in May. He hated any confinement. He pulled out his IVs and went home. Days later, O’Neal found him on his side, dead in bed, just 63. His memorial would be tomorrow.

“People are dropping, man,” he tells the students. He doesn’t say that his thoughts were circling his own mortality so relentlessly that he couldn’t sleep last night, and climbed out of bed to tally up what he would leave behind.

Pete O’Neal’s four-acre compound bustles with visitors, some of them preparing dance routines for the memorial service for Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, the onetime Black Panther who died in his farmhouse down the road. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

Hundreds gather for Pratt’s memorial service. O’Neal sits on the stage under the avocado tree and tells a few stories about their friendship: How Pratt always told him his toes were ugly. How they joked endlessly about who was the bigger hayseed.

Amid the prayers and the singing and the tributes, he manages to steal away for a few moments to inspect the bus. The seats are lined up in the dirt, ready to be scrubbed and resewn. The windows are taped up so the painting can begin. Panther colors: black and light blue.

He remembers discovering the ocean.

He was in his late teens, a heartland kid who believed his fearful precinct of Kansas City was the absolute center of the world, its ugliness and bigotry a true picture of the world. It is why, to his mind, violent revolution looked logical and inevitable.

Then he arrived in California to report for duty in the Navy, and turned his head and saw the Pacific. His breath was caught short by the immensity of it, all that blue stretching out into other lands, other stories. It was the start of a decades-long lesson that the world is bigger, more complicated and interesting than his little plot of bitter experience had led him to suspect.

His orphans have never left this inland region of cornfields and malarial swamps. They’ve never tasted salt water, or felt hot beach sand between their toes.

“They have no idea — no idea — what the ocean is,” he says.

Nights and weekends, they pile into his living room and watch documentaries about sea life. He tells them about whales, giant squid, blind fish in the lightless deep. He regales them with shark stories.

Will they eat me?

If they’re hungry enough, they’ll try.

Because they don’t like me?

No, it’s the natural order of things.

Now and then he indulges in what he calls “Kansas City exaggeration,” and even the majestic sea gets some burnishing. The sharks in his stories grow bigger than houses.

The kids study the TV. The sharks don’t look that big.

OK. But they do have sharks bigger t

panther in tanz

All the orphans receive a razor sharp haircut the boys and the girls and wash off the loose stubble under a tap of gold water.

pan2

Pete O’Neal shadow boxes with the young son of his deceased close friend Geronimo Pratt on the eve of his memorial inside his Tanzania compound. Pratt was hospitalized with high blood pressure in May. He hated any confinement. He pulled out his IVs and went home. Days later, O’Neal found him on his side, dead in bed, just 63. Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt — the Panthers’ former field marshal, who spent 27 years behind bars on a murder conviction before a California judge overturned it. In 2002, Pratt bought a big farmhouse nearby with his false imprisonment settlement, and O’Neal felt as though he’d rediscovered a lost brother. They drove through the village listening to Richard Pryor CDs, laughing until they wheezed and tears rolled down their cheeks.

BACK TO AFRICA!-ARKANSAS BLACKS ARE SMART ABOUT GOING BACK TO AFRICA IN 1896! -BE SMART IN 2012!- THIS IS YOUR YEAR TO LEAVE RACIST AMERIKKKA BEHIND AND ENJOY BLACK FREEDOM IN AFRICA!- FROM ARBLACKHISTORYONLINE.COM

from arblackhistoryonline.com

BACK TO AFRICA !- THIS BLACK AMERIKKKAN DAN FOSTER DID SO WELL ADJUSTING IN NIGERIA THAT HE’S WRITING A BOOK ABOUT HOW TO DO BUSINESS IN NIGERIA- IMAGINE! BLACK ON!-FROM NAIRALAND.COM

FROM NAIRALAND.COM
CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
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Author Topic: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book) (Read 5257 views)
Mobinga
CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« on: September 01, 2010, 04:47 AM »

When yes means maybe: Doing business in Nigeria

Quote from: CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Dean Foster is the author of “The Global Etiquette Guide to Africa”

Foster believes the key to success in Nigeria depends on your contacts and commitment

Providing a tip or “dash” for services, including the processing of official documents, is normal

London, England (CNN) — In a business culture where negotiations are fluid and what’s agreed on Monday might not necessary mean the same thing on Tuesday, how do you get the job done?

It’s a challenge some foreigners encounter when doing business in Nigeria.

However, things don’t have to be difficult explains Dean Foster, president of the cross-cultural training company Dean Foster Associates and author of “The Global Etiquette Guide to Africa.”

According to Foster, as long as you understand the cultural etiquette, doing business in Nigeria can offer vast opportunities. But, he says, success comes down two key factors: contacts and commitment.

“The bottom line is that you cannot expect to go into Nigeria, make the deal, turn around, walk out and expect things to go as planned,” Foster told CNN.

You’ll build friendships and relationships that will last a life

–Dean Foster, author of “The Global Etiquette Guide to Africa.”

“If you’re committed to business in Nigeria you have to know that you’re entering an environment that requires your constant attention and constant renegotiation. Adaptability and flexibility on your part is key,” he continued.

Knowing the right person is also fundamental, according to Foster, who says personal relationships are often more important than regulations and laws. It’s something, he warns, many outsiders may feel uncomfortable with.

“You have to be wary of the old tradition of ‘dash,’ which in Nigeria essentially means putting money in the hands of an individual,” he said.

“It is of course in many respects illegal, but it is still quite a common convention. And the degree to which you, as a business person, want to co-operate with this will determine to a great degree the success you have in Nigeria.”

But despite the challenges, Foster is adamant business in Nigeria can be a rewarding experience — and not just financially.

“The people are fantastic — you realize that the social networks and relationships you put so some much energy and time into, are in fact is part of the great reward. You’ll build friendships and relationships that will last a life,” he told CNN.

Dean Foster’s top five tips for doing business in Nigeria.

1. Agreeing with people is considered to be a sign of respect. Nigerians generally say “yes” to a request because their respect for you does not allow them to say “no.”

2. Among traditional Nigerian business people, an appointment is rarely private. Try not to be irritated if your meeting is interrupted by phone calls and/or visits from your client’s friends and family.

3. Do not eat everything on your plate; leaving some food is a signal that you have had enough. If you clean your plate, you are indicating that you
want more food.

4. Nigerians tend to stand close to each other while speaking. If you are uncomfortable conversing at this distance, try to refrain from backing up.

5. Nigerians are good bargainers, and you should expect to bargain and compromise in the marketplace and at the negotiating table.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/08/31/business.etiquette.nigeria/index.html

Quote
Comments in the Cnn Forum

sweet03 I personally will not do business in Nigeria again, i dont believe them and they r not worth the hassle. THey are sweet talkers, so do not try it.

Indykid Is there any Nigerians in this forum??? If so , put your wallet in your front pocket. just sayin, Angry Angry

heo9542 Doing business in Nigeria, thats a good idea. I get emails for it all the time and they seem trustworthy to me. I cant even tell you how many millions of dollars I have waiting for me in escrow over there. This guy neva jam Grin Grin

Dis Guy
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #1 on: September 01, 2010, 04:57 AM »

Quote
According to Foster, as long as you understand the cultural etiquette, doing business in Nigeria can offer vast opportunities. But, he says, success comes down two key factors: contacts and commitment.

Quote
Foster is adamant business in Nigeria can be a rewarding experience — and not just financially.
“The people are fantastic — you realize that the social networks and relationships you put so some much energy and time into, are in fact is part of the great reward. You’ll build friendships and relationships that will last a life,” he told CNN.

so whats bad about this article, look at the glowing compliments Grin

Dis Guy
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #2 on: September 01, 2010, 04:59 AM »

Quote
1. Agreeing with people is considered to be a sign of respect. Nigerians generally say “yes” to a request because their respect for you does not allow them to say “no.”

this is a solution to all those fights on Nairaland, everyone should just agree and say yes sir yes ma! simples!

gozzilla (m)
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #3 on: September 01, 2010, 08:35 AM »

I am still trying to pick out the the bad in this article.

calyx
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #4 on: September 01, 2010, 08:57 AM »

99% of the content of this article is true and well informed.

Care-Taker (m)
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #5 on: September 01, 2010, 09:29 AM »

The man is a ”been to”

Those are the attitudes Nigerians have that we are going to change for the better.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GodBlessNigeria

deor03 (m)
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #6 on: September 01, 2010, 09:38 AM »

Quote from: gozzilla on September 01, 2010, 08:35 AM
I am still trying to pick out the the bad in this article.

Me too !

Quote from: calyx on September 01, 2010, 08:57 AM
99% of the content of this article is true and well informed.
Also, True !

PapaBrowne (m)
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #7 on: September 01, 2010, 09:39 AM »

Very accurate article!!! The guys knows so well!!

jba203
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #8 on: September 01, 2010, 10:08 AM »

The bright side of the article is that, it paints a picture that doing business in Nigeria can potetially pay dividends. However, 90% of the article shows Nigeria’s volatility in establishing a working sytem. It is also written as an arlet to those who may wish to do business over there. It talks about contacts and commitment: that in stable economies cannot serve as a determinant for good business.

ziga
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #9 on: September 01, 2010, 10:50 AM »

@OP

I don’t agree with you that the article painted Nigeria black. The writer is obviously someone who has done some real research on Nigeria because he actually presented the facts as they are.

He gave the positives and negatives, and he tried to rationalize the reasons for it and he was not in anyway sarcastic about his remarks. This is unlike some other reports that i’ve seen that look like they were written from the seat of a plane.

This report is a very honest evaluation of the situation on ground. Thanks to the reporter for being factual.

Mobinga
Re: Cnn Article Paints Nigeria Black
« #10 on: September 01, 2010, 11:08 AM »

Hehehe!! Oya let me modify the topic

goldplated (m)
Re: CNN :: Doing Business In Nigeria
« #11 on: September 01, 2010, 07:54 PM »

A wonderful tribute!

kulyie
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #12 on: September 02, 2010, 03:53 PM »

he’s sure right.he’s bin in nigeria 4 over 10 yrs,so he shud know wot livin n doing buisness in nigeria entails especially doing business in lagos.we have a lotta cultural influences wen doing business n foreign counterparts who arent aware of dis may experience cultural shock Lips sealed Lips sealed Lips sealed Lips sealed

Ranoscky (m)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #13 on: September 02, 2010, 04:14 PM »

Pls, i’ll lyk to know if Dan Foster is back in nigeria, any1 to help me out with d answer? Undecided

nanidee (f)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #14 on: September 02, 2010, 04:28 PM »

@ poster, Dan Foster, or Dean Foster?, Undecided Undecided Undecided

bones1 (m)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #15 on: September 02, 2010, 04:31 PM »

Article is an accurate and non biased account of Nigeria

agitator
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #16 on: September 02, 2010, 05:00 PM »

Perfect analysis Cool

matiltom_d (f)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #17 on: September 02, 2010, 05:23 PM »

I’m confused in here o! Dan Foster the OAP or Dean Foster?

ayex0001
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #18 on: September 02, 2010, 05:33 PM »

Maybe he wanted to say Usman Dan vodio, lol

xtremeidea (m)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #19 on: September 02, 2010, 05:38 PM »

Dan Foster has written a book? woooooooooow Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked

Tokotaya
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #20 on: September 02, 2010, 05:41 PM »

It’s an error by the OP. This is about a different Dan, from the OAP

chosen04 (f)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #21 on: September 02, 2010, 06:57 PM »

Quote from: Tokotaya on September 02, 2010, 05:41 PM
It’s an error by the OP. This is about a different Dan, from the OAP

Are you serious?

JUO
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #22 on: September 02, 2010, 07:48 PM »

this guy don drink nija water

blakduches
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #23 on: September 02, 2010, 08:17 PM »

A true depiction of the nigerian system.

oladayo042
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #24 on: September 02, 2010, 08:20 PM »

Factual truth abt Naija.
3. Do not eat everything on your plate; leaving some food is a signal that you have had enough. If you clean your plate, you are indicating that you want more food. Shocked Shocked

rebranded (m)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #25 on: September 02, 2010, 09:28 PM »

I see Dean Foster NOT Dan Foster pls change the heading its misleading!

Nymph node (m)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #26 on: September 02, 2010, 11:45 PM »

The dark dude is a presenter, Inspiration FM Lagos the other is a US based writer he wrote Global Etiquette Guide to Africa and the Middle East

* Dan-foster Inspiration Fm.jpg (10.52 KB, 299×448 )

* dean+foster.jpg (16.8 KB, 320×240 )

Dis Guy
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #27 on: September 03, 2010, 01:47 AM »

Quote
4. Nigerians tend to stand close to each other while speaking. If you are uncomfortable conversing at this distance, try to refrain from backing up.

so why do we still talk like we have loudspeakers in our mouth??

shilling (f)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #28 on: September 03, 2010, 07:02 AM »

Quote from: Dis Guy on September 03, 2010, 01:47 AM
so why do we still talk like we have loudspeakers in our mouth??

I was also wondering about that. I’ve never noticed that about Nigerians whenever I visit – standing so close. I feel super-uncomfortable when a person does that.

rasputinn (m)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #29 on: September 03, 2010, 07:22 AM »

The day a man as unserious as Dan Foster(sorry Dan,but you know what I mean)writes a book about doing business anywhere,,,,,,,, ,,,,.,.,.,.,

agitator
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #30 on: September 03, 2010, 07:44 AM »

MTN knew about this and they are the greatest in africa, vodacom didn’t and they lost
Julius Berger also towed this line, and some new foreign construction companies are following their footsteps. Cool

Jakumo (m)
Re: CNN: Doing Business In Nigeria (Review Of Dan Foster’s Book)
« #31 on: September 03, 2010, 07:54 AM »

Quote from: shilling on September 03, 2010, 07:02 AM
I was also wondering about that. I’ve never noticed that about Nigerians whenever I visit – standing so close. I feel super-uncomfortable when a person does that.

Please don’t feel uncomfortable, since a true Nigerian conversation is not in progress until you can SMELL the breath and body odor of the person invading your personal space, and feel your ears ringing from the glass-breaking volume of their speech.

MALCOLM X-OUR GREAT BLACK LEADER PRESENTED THIS TO AFRICAN HEADS OF STATE -AN HISTORIC BLACK FIRST !-WE NEED TO GET BACK TO OUR AFRICAN CULTURE AND STOP BEING 21ST CENTURY SLAVES IN AMERIKKKA!-FROM NATHANIELTURNER.COM

MALCOLM X IN IBADAN NIGERIA 1964

FROM nathanielturner.com

Appeal to African Heads of State

Speech by Malcolm X

Chairman, Organization of Afro-American Unity

Throughout June, 1964, MALCOLM X spoke, agitated, educated and organized to create a new, non-religious movement to promote black unity and work for freedom “by any means necessary.” On June 28, this new movement was born under the name of the Organization of Afro-American Unit, its “statement of basic aims and objectives” was released to the public, and Malcolm was designated chairman.

Shortly thereafter, on July 9, Malcolm again left the United States for Africa and the Middle East. His immediate objective was to attend the “African Summit”—the second meeting of the Organization of African Unity, which had been formed in 1963 to bring about joint action by the independent African governments.

The OAU conference was held in Cairo July 17–21, and was attended by nearly all the heads of the thirty-four member states. The welcoming address was made by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic who, while reviewing the events of the previous year, hailed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that had recently been enacted in the United States.

Malcolm was accepted as an observer at the conference. In this capacity he was permitted to submit to the delegates an eight-page memorandum urging their support of the Negro struggle in the United States and their help in bring the plight of the American Negro before the United Nations. The memorandum, which follows, was delivered to the delegates on July 17, one day before the events that came to be called “the Harlem riots.”

Your Excellencies:

The Organization of Afro-American Unity has sent me to attend this historic African summit conferences as an observer to represent the interests of 22 million African-American whose human rights are being violated daily by the racism of American imperialists.

The Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) has been formed by a cross-section of America’s African-American community, and is patterned after the letter and spirit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

Just as the Organization of African Unity has called upon all African leaders to submerge their differences and unite on common objectives for the common good of all Africans—in America the Organization of Afro-American Unity has called upon Afro-American leaders to submerge their differences and find areas of agreement wherein we can work in unity for the good of the entire 22 million African-Americans.

Since the 22 million of us were originally Africans, who are now in America, not by choice but only by a cruel accident in our history, we strongly believe that African problems are our problems and our problems are African problems.

Your Excellencies:

We also believe that as heads of the Independent African states you are the shepherd of all African peoples everywhere, whether they are still at home on the mother continent or have been scattered abroad.

Some African leaders at this conference have implied that they have enough problems here on the mother continent without adding the Afro-American problem.

With all due respect to your esteemed positions, I must remind all of you that the good shepherd will leave ninety-nine sheep, who are safe at home, to go to the aid of the one who is lost and has fallen into the clutches of the imperialist wolf.

We, in America, are your long-lost brothers and sisters, and I am here only to remind you that our problems are your problems. As the African-Americans “awaken” today, we find ourselves in a strange land that has rejected us, and, like the prodigal son, we are turning to our elder brothers for help. We pray our pleas will not fall upon deaf ears.

We were taken forcibly in chains from this mother continent and have now spend over 300 years in America, suffering the most inhuman forms of physical and psychological tortures imaginable.

During the past ten years the entire world has witnessed our men, women, and children being attacked and bitten by vicious police dogs, brutally beaten by police clubs, and washed down the sewers by high-pressure water hoses that would rip the clothes from our bodies and the flesh from our limbs.

And all of these inhuman atrocities have been inflicted upon us by the American governmental authorities, the police themselves, for no reason other than we seek the recognition and respect granted our human beings in America.

Your Excellencies:

The American government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of your 22 million African-American brothers and sisters. We stand defenseless, at the mercy of American racists who murder us at will for no reason other than we are black and of African descent.

Two black bodies were found in the Mississippi River this week; last week an unarmed African-American educator was murdered in cold blood in Georgia; a few days before that three civil-rights workers disappeared completely, perhaps murdered also, only because they were teaching our people in Mississippi how to vote and how to secure their political rights.

Our problems are your problems We have lived for over 300 years in that American den of racist wolves in constant fear of losing life and limb. Recently, three students from Kenya were mistaken for American Negroes and were brutally beaten by New York police. Shortly after that, two diplomats from Uganda were also beaten by the New York City police, who mistook them for American Negroes.

If Africans are brutally beaten while only visiting in America, imagine the physical and psychological suffering received by your brothers and sisters who have lived there for over 300 years.

Our problem is your problem. No matter how much independence Africans get here on the mother continent, unless you wear your national dress at all times, when you visit America, you may be mistaken for one of us and suffer the same psychological humiliation and physical mutilation that is an everyday occurrence in our lives.

Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved. You will never be fully respected until and unless we are also respected. You will never be recognized as free human beings until and unless we are also recognized and treated as human beings.

Our problem is your problem. It is not a Negro problem, nor an American problem. This is a world problem; a problem for humanity. It is not a problem of civil rights but a problem of human rights.

If the United States Supreme Court justice, Arthur Goldberg, a few weeks ago, could find legal grounds to threaten to bring Russia before the United Nations and charge her with violating the human rights of less than three million Russian Jews, what makes our African brothers hesitate to bring the Untied States government before the United Nations and charge her with violating the human rights of 22 million African-Americans?

We pray that our African brothers have not freed themselves of European colonialism only to be overcome and held in check now by American dollarism. Don’t let American racism be “legalized” by American dollarism.

America is worse than South Africa, because not only is America racist, but she also is deceitful and hypocritical. South Africa preaches segregation and practices segregation. She, at least, practices what she preaches. American preaches integration and practices segregation. She preaches one thing while deceitfully practicing another.

South Africa is like a vicious wolf, openly hostile towards black humanity. But America is cunning like a fox, friendly and smiling, but even more vicious and deadly than the wolf.

The wolf and the fox are both enemies of humanity; both are canine; both humiliate and mutilate their victims. Both have the same objectives, but differ only in methods.

If South Africa is guilty of violating the human rights of Africans here on the mother continent, then America is guilty of worse violations of 22 million Africans on the American continent. And if South Africa racism is not a domestic issue, then American racism also is not a domestic issue.

Many of you have been led to believe that the much publicized, recently passed civil-rights bill is a sign that America is making a sincere effort to correct the injustices we have suffered there. This propaganda maneuver is part of her deceit and trickery to keep the African nations from condemning her racist practices before the United Nations, as you are now doing as regards the same practices of South Africa.

The United States Supreme Court passed a law ten years ago making America’s segregated school system illegal. But the federal government has yet to enforce this law even in the North. If the federal government cannot enforce the law of the highest court in the land when it comes to nothing but equal rights to education for African Americans, how can anyone be so naïve as to think all the additional laws brought into being by the civil-rights bill will be enforced?

These are nothing but tricks of the century’s leading neo-colonialist power. Surely, our intellectually mature African brothers will not fall for this trickery.

The Organization of Afro-American Unity, in cooperation with a coalition of other Negro leaders and organizations, has decided to elevate our freedom struggle above the domestic level of civil rights. We intend to “internationalize” it by placing it at the level of human rights. Our freedom struggle for human dignity is no longer confined to the domestic jurisdiction of the United States government.

We beseech the independent African states to help us bring our problem before the United Nations, on the grounds that the United States government is morally incapable of protecting the lives and the property of 22 million African-Americans. And on the grounds that our deteriorating plight is definitely becoming a threat to world peace.

Out of frustration and hopelessness our young people have reached the point of no return. We no longer endorse patience and turning-the-other-cheek. We assert the right of self-defense by whatever means necessary, and reserve the right of maximum retaliation against our racist oppressors, no matter what the odds against us are.

From here on in, if we must die anyway, we will die fighting back and we will not die alone. We intend to see that our racist oppressors also get a taste of death.

We are well aware that our future efforts to defend ourselves by retaliating—by meeting violence with violence, eye for eye and tooth for tooth—could create the type of racial conflict in America that could easily escalate into a violent, world-wide, bloody race war.

In the interests of world peace and security, we beseech the heads of the independent African states to recommend an immediate investigation into our problem by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

If this humble plea that I am voicing at this conference is not properly worded, then let our elder brothers, who know the legal language, come to our aid and word our plea in the proper language necessary for it to be heard.

One last word, my beloved brothers at this African summit:

“No one knows the master better than his servant.” We have been servants in America for over 300 years. We have a thorough, inside knowledge of this man who calls himself “Uncle Sam.” Therefore, you must heed our warning: Don’t escape from European colonialism only to become even more enslaved by deceitful, “friendly” American dollarism.

May Allah’s blessings of good health and wisdom be upon you all. Salaam Alaikum.

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Malcolm X Speaks • George Breitman, editor • © Copyright 1965 by Merit Publishers and Betty Shabazz • Grove Press • New York, NY 10003 Remembering Malcolm Malcolm X Videos

posted 21 February 2006

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Feb. 21, 2006–41 years ago

Malcolm X was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem

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Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the Making of the New Negro

By Barbara Foley

A carefully argued, nuanced presentation of the genesis of the Harlem Renaissance. Foley’s breadth of knowledge in American radical history is impressive.—American Literature

Foley’s book is a lucid and useful one… A heavyweight intervention, it prompts significant rethinking of the ideological and representational strategies structuring the era.—Journal of American Studies

Foley does a masterful job of analyzing the racial and political theories of a wide range of black and white figures, from the radical Left to the racist Right… Students of African American political and cultural history in the early twentieth century cannot ignore this book. Essential.—Choice

In our current time of crisis, when ruling classes busily promote nationalism and racism to conceal the class nature of their inter-imperialist rivalries, one can only hope that readers will not be daunted by Foley’s dedication to analyzing the ideological milieu of the 1920s that contributed to the eclipse of New Negro radicalism by New Negro nationalism.—Science & Society

With the New Negro movement and the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s was a landmark decade in African American political and cultural history, characterized by an upsurge in racial awareness and artistic creativity. In Spectres of 1919 Barbara Foley traces the origins of this revolutionary era to the turbulent year 1919, identifying the events and trends in American society that spurred the black community to action and examining the forms that action took as it evolved.

Unlike prior studies of the Harlem Renaissance, which see 1919 as significant mostly because of the geographic migrations of blacks to the North, Spectres of 1919 looks at that year as the political crucible from which the radicalism of the 1920s emerged. Foley draws from a wealth of primary sources, taking a bold new approach to the origins of African American radicalism and adding nuance and complexity to the understanding of a fascinating and vibrant era.—amazon.com

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