In just 33 words, the world conferred upon our historic president another honor.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
The White House and political Washington were stunned. The president was “humbled,” his critics blazed with racist rage and the rest of the world wondered why one of the world’s most prestigious awards went to one still new to statecraft.
Since its founding by the estate of the Swedish munitions maker and inventor of dynamite Alfred Nobel in 1896, 97 individuals and 20 institutions have received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Though famous names like Jane Addams, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger, George C. Marshall and Kofi Annan have received this award, in recent years, other than President Jimmy Carter and former Vice-President Al Gore, few recognizable names have been honored.
President Obama isn’t the first chief executive honored. The first was President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for mediating an end to the war between Japan and Russia. President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919 for his advocacy of the League of Nations, though America rebuked the League after Wilson left office.
Twenty-two years after leaving office, President Carter won for his peacemaking activities.
Most African-Americans and Americans know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won in 1964 for his civil rights effort. But many have forgotten Ralph Bunche, the first African-American to earn the honor in 1950 for his work as a United Nations Mideast mediator.
The official citation from the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not mention the Mideast, nor Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Instead they focused their decision on the Obama Administration’s efforts to rebuild international cooperation and striving for nuclear disarmament; an issue extremely dear to Europeans.
Here’s the Nobel Committee’s rationale:
“The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.
“The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.
“For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.’”
I couldn’t say it better myself.
What I’m Hearing
in the Streets
During last year’s primary, a number of elected Democratic officeholders were livid that other elected Democrats covertly (some overtly) worked against the party’s slated/endorsed candidate for Congress – Andre Carson.
The desire of those elected Democrats (mainly Black) for retribution against those other elected party leaders who didn’t support the party’s official choice had led to proposed changes in local Democrats’ rules for candidate endorsements.
Under the changes, candidates going through the slating/endorsement process who don’t receive an endorsement must agree not to run against the party’s choice.
If they do, they face banishment from the party’s endorsement conventions for up to six years.
For 15 years and two months, this column has stood squarely for increasing the number of African-American elected officials in Indianapolis. At times, to achieve that goal, I’ve opposed slated/endorsed Democratic candidates in favor of more qualified unslated/unendorsed Black Democratic candidates.
And in support of the overall goal, in general elections, I’ve even supported some Black Republican candidates.
I strongly believe that primary voters should have the choice to select their party’s candidates for the general election. I have never liked a “slating” convention picking candidates without giving voters the final say.
Many times the best candidates, especially from our Black community, haven’t come through the slating/endorsement process.
Julia Carson, Bill Crawford, Glenn Howard started as unslated candidates. Several of the Black judges on the bench would never have gotten there if Black voters hadn’t “broken” the slate during a primary.
The local Democratic Party has the right to determine who participates in their slating/endorsement process. But party leaders don’t have the right to ram candidates down our community’s throats. That’s reserved for us – the voters – the community – to decide.
There’s many younger African-American Democrats who are chafing at what they believe is a lack of upward mobility. They want their chance at power and leadership.
There’s also a growing group of younger African-American elected officials who, in the next decade, must exercise leadership in the party and our community.
To the younger generation of current and potential Black elected officials I say it’s time to quit griping and complaining. As Frederick Douglass and Bill Crawford always say, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
The younger generation of Black Democratic Party activists and workers need to heed Douglass’ and Crawford’s exhortation. It’s time to stop whining over a glass of wine at the club and get engaged to take power the American way.
Like Julia, Bill, Glenn, Barack and scores of others, it’s time to get organized, build your movement, create grassroots organizations and people power, tap volunteers and donors, get together your issues and the rationale for your stands on issues people really care about, get visible in the neighborhoods and streets, put yourself before the community/voters and get elected. Without the party’s slating/endorsement.
It’s been done before and it can be done again!
Are you up to the challenge?
See ‘ya next week!
