Maybe it’s you who doesn’t understand what blogs are. I wrote this post in real-time alongside this event as it happened. This post is not, was not and will not ever be implied or meant to be a formal transcript of the State of the Black Confederacy from “Hi, how are ya’ll doing?” to “Thanks for coming everybody and drive home safely!”

I provided direct money quotes with some of my opinions throw in. I’ve linked directly to the piece so people can watch it themselves.

You’re claiming that I’m engaging in propaganda? Randall “Black people are eating each other at the Superdome” Robinson’s 3,000 word, ten minute ramble about the Brilliance of Urkel Christ, Hate America agitprop, reflections on Beyonce and Aristide-loving is nothing but propaganda.

Did you not engage in political propoganda to advance your interest and your opinions???

Hell yes I’m cherry-picking quotes. This conference is a fucking cherry tree orchard.

What about this entire Segregationist experience of Tavis’ is not one big piece of political propaganda to promote Obama and a racist agenda.

Randall Robinson:
Well I will say what it may say and a bit about what does not say. It may say the country voted to elect Obama had self interest in mind. he’s brilliant. You don’t become president of the Harvard law review unless you are brilliant, you have to make straight A plus against the toughest completion in the world to make Harvard law review, and then to become its president Lani can tell you more about that, that is an extraordinary achievement. He is brilliant and he is also a way out for the country and he also had the assistance of his predecessor. (Laughter)

So, but… This is not an address to the problems I think we are here to talk about. I think we need to contextualize a lot of what we have been saying here, because we talked about how we should dance with him (President Obama), I think it may be more important to understand that question, to talk about how we been dancing, and how we have not been dancing. Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice once said, “The most important office in a democracy is the office of citizens.” In a democracy the citizenry must be enlightened. We don’t have a great deal of experience in America, black and white, with informed critical oversight. We as a population, measured against most areas of the world in a way that will shock Americans, are globally illiterates. We don’t know very much, and it is not our fault because you can’t know what you can’t know. And so, it would surprise many Americans who have this self image about our selves to learn that we have become the major obstruction to the human right movement in the world. You look at the treaties that have been embraced by the United Nation community, the treaties to defend the rights of women has been ratified and accepted by 185 counties; the U.S. is against it, in a very tiny group; the treaties to defend the right of children ratified by an enormous number of nations the overwhelming majority, the U.S. is against it; the establishment of the International Criminal Court to bring to justice people who have committed horrific human right abuses overwhelmingly adopted at Rome with Africa, Asia, Europe, everybody on board, all of American’s allies, the Clinton Administration weaken it, the Bush administration would not ratify it, because there was fear that before the bar of this court will be brought at one time or another Americas who committed horrific human right crimes, and so we want the world to live by one yard stick while we live by another. The disadvantage of watching American News is that you get controlled News and when you watch News in other countries you get an entirely different view on to what we are and are not doing.

It took us 40 years to accept the convention against genocide. The Clinton administration, President Clinton himself and Secretary of State Magdalene Albright blocked UN intervention in Rwanda. It cost ten of thousands of lives, but we love Clinton, so when we talking about critical oversight, we have to look at what we have to practice now and we must practice it constructively but we have to look at what we didn’t practice then. President Clinton when to the WTO and striped the Caribbean countries of their export markets in Europe, meaning countries like St. Lucia with 85% of their export earning coming from the sale of bananas had their economy crushed. Farmers in St.Vincent were committing suicide because of the policies of the Clinton administration. The Bush Administration, President Bush with the assistance of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Power went into Haiti, sent 30 U.S. Special Forces in to kidnap the President of Haiti and his wife who is an American citizen, a product of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, born in the Bronx, the administration probably in this case committed a felony, took them to the Central African republic that was then a police state a dictatorship…Maxine Water and I had to chartered a plan to go an recue the president and take him to Jamaica and he is now in South Africa.

Here is the point; you can’t know what you have not had a chance to know, we owe Haiti. We would not be here today had Toussaint Louverture done what no one had done before or done since, they defeat Napoleon Bonaparte they lost 150,000 lies to purchased their freedom, and they ignited the emancipation movement in all of North and south American. Lincoln did do this, it was begun and triggered by Toussaint Louverture and Haiti has been punished for it since 1804. But you see we don’t know and we allow President Clinton to buy our favor with a saxophone and a knowledge of gospel songs.

You cannot practice crucial vigilance without information, without knowing, otherwise we are simply cheerleaders who respond to fashionable speeches. We have to know who is for us and who have been against us. Our behavior in the united nation on these human right treaties is a disgrace. And it would shock most Americans to look at the record, out of 20 plus major human right conventions that has been past since Eleanor Roosevelt pioneered the universal declaration of human right, of the 20 plus conventions the United States is a party only to six, against the overwhelming opinion of the global community, and so if the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizens, then it’s a responsibility we all have. But we can’t practice this office until we get ourselves informed. (Travis, trying to interrupt….) Let me finish. I heard Beyoance say something the other night in response to… (Travis: Randal Robison is about to quote Beyoance??…)

I am quoting Beyoance, you know what she said when she performance at the inauguration Ball, she said, and I think we must not over look the significance of this election for this reason, we are going to disagree with him but make sure we do it in context, because what ever he is going to be he is going to be much better than what we have seen, but she said, that when sees President Obama it makes her want to be smart. We shall never forget and ten millions of minds globally, when that inauguration occurred I saw in St’ Kiss I saw a man walking through the airport in coverall, saying Barack, Barack, this is transformative and its happening simultaneously of people who see a new model.

Travis, there are two quiet question, you said at least five or six time by my account Barack Obama is brilliant. You know the politics of how our government work better than any body… you gave a wonderful dissertation, we can’t know what we don’t know.. so how do we get to know what they don’t want us to know to be informed citizen so we fulfill the Brandeis formulation, Number one and Number two and what is about Obama beyond his brilliance that make you think there is going to be change in U. S. Policy under him toward Africana and Caribbean counties that you dedicated your life too.

Well I read his books, I don’t suppose they were fictions, I think that there was something there, in any case we gave Bill Clinton eight years and hadn’t noticed what he had done to us, Barrack Obama has had scarcely 40 days. I think we ought to give him a grace period… don’t you think?

Number one, that does not mean we shouldn’t practice this vigilance. On your first question, I quoted Beyoance because I think that is very importance for all us to have that same emotion. I played basketball in college, I ran up and down a court in short pants, I thought it was important…..laughter…. we will change the world between our ears, in here and it means we have to practice ourselves and teach our children the importance of rigorous scholarship and learning and having an insatiable appetite for knowing all there is to be known, because if we don’t have that, there is nowhere we can go we can be so easily manipulated led here and led there and so I think it’s very durable thing. We’ve got to turn around this business of hero identification and what values we going to celebrate and what values we are going to decry.

We got to be critical…I don’t know how to do this Travis, but you know News makers and editors both in television and in print media have extraordinary power, what they will do and what they won’t not do. Nobody covered the kidnapping of Aristide I wrote a book about it: An Unbroken agony. Do you think that the president of similar size country Australia or Belgium was kidnapped by the Untied State and dragooned off half way around the world that the Press would not cover it. (My insert: that was the point) It was shameful; it was awful, there was no question that whatever you thought about Aristide —many was for him and many weren’t, but 90% of his people by polls demonstrated that he was the person they elected and he was the person they wanted. Democracy is not measured by whether when somebody is elected you do what I want you to do… democracy mean, I didn’t support anybody in South Africa election, I fought for the opportunity to have one, if they elected an Africana it would have been fine with me, I don’t vote in South Africa. They will make the right decision, that’s the excise of their decision. We can’t go around overthrowing democracies we don’t like because we disagree.

A profound response!!! Now reread what you wrote? Did you not engage in political propoganda to advance your interest and your opinions???

I want you to tell me which comments that you’re offended by and we can cover them. Nobody here is “calling on the dogs” and the only riding on buses around here are the people that Obama throws under the bus when they prove inconvenient to his cause.

I may have heard about that slavery thing but if you’ve got some new information I’d love to hear it. The world has historically been shitty in the past. It’s been shitty for a lot of people a lot of the time. Not just the U.S. – the whole world. It’s been getting better though.

History does repeat itself every year though. Every year, Tavis invites Cornell West or Dick Gregory or some other nutballs to talk crazy to people under the guise of empowering “black foke” as Tavis often says.

Tell me what you did not like about my summary. What did I say up there that did not happen.

Just because this is not the current state of black america, we have not forgot, and some of us may never forgive. We are told by are elders to forgive but never forget, so history will never repeat itself. Which is why we meet every year.