Social Movement: Obama’Laid and the Internet

12 Aug 2010

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR columnist Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.

The recent Netroots Nation conference shows that Obama'Laid is easily dispensed in digital form, inebriating millions. What does it matter if 25 percent of Twitter users are Black, when “by 2012 75 percent of the country will have only one Internet service provider offering high-speed broadband Internet?” Clearly, the revolution will not be Twitterized. A real mass movement is needed.

Social Media Is Not

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR columnist Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.

“The Internet didn’t prevent Oscar Grant’s murder from occurring or prevent his killer from being handed an unjust non-sentence.”

Obama’Laid is a nasty drug of delusion. And like most drugs the method used to ingest it is less an issue than the drug itself. It may indeed be healthier to eat THC than smoke it but both will get you high. Enough alcohol whether in beer or shot form will get you drunk. And whether it comes in discussions of race, war or the economy Obama’Laid still packs a punch. One powerful form of Obama’Laid is certainly found in discussions of Obama’s use of and planned policies for the Internet. These highly intoxicated discussions include the ill-informed claims of the Internet as a mechanism for “changing the racial narrative,” or leveling the political playing field in the national public sphere. More and more often these days people are describing the use of “social’ media” and the “success” stories of people organizing this or that event with the use of the Internet, Twitter or Facebook. Books today now often include some chapter about how the Internet and blogging is revolutionizing politics and media. So much so that there is even the horribly liberal and co-opting theft of the term grassroots by the unofficially Democratic Party Netroots Nation conference which held its fifth annual convention this summer in Las Vegas. The Internet has so captured liberal politics that they cannot help themselves but to further denigrate genuine grassroots radical politics by suggesting that such movements are being developed, in fact can only be developed, online. It is an easy and safe conclusion but its incorrectness is simply dangerous.

For instance, participants at the Netroots Nation conference this and in recent years could be heard touting the wonders of the internet in bringing more people into the public sphere and offering outlets for more diverse voices – especially now that 25 percent of Twitter users are Black! As one conference participant said, with mobile devices being so popular among Black and Brown people, there no longer is any significant race or class-based digital divide or unequal access to the Internet. And, of course, some again uncritically applauded the Internet as being what brought young people into the process of electing Obama and others suggested that the use of this “social media” played some positive roll in the wake of the killing of Oscar Grant. It seems not to matter whether or not Obama is good for us, or that his Wall Street funding is what made his Internet presence what is was, or that the Internet didn’t prevent Grant’s murder from occurring or prevent his killer from being handed an unjust non-sentence. But this is what Democratic Party liberal politics leads to, what Fred Hampton once described as, the “explanations that don’t explain… and the conclusions that don’t conclude.”

Verizon and Google continued to take advantage of a weak Federal Communications Commission, with a weak chair who serves a weak president.”

This past week dealt another blow to those who will soon be suffering the hangover of all this Internet Obama’Laid binge-drinking. Verizon and Google continued to take advantage of a weak Federal Communications Commission, with a weak chair who serves a weak president. Both Obama and his FCC chair Julius Genachowski once said they would be champions of a free and equally accessed Internet. But as Obama has done with health care, bailouts and wars his appointee Genchowski is bowing to media industry corporate pressure. This is a first in what is assuredly a coming onslaught of death blows to Net Neutrality and will allow the two media giants to determine which websites users can access at full speed versus ones they deem unworthy. And because they are initially focused on the mobile devices most used by the poor to access the Internet the previous delusion of those devices erasing the digital divide will soon be further exposed as such. Similarly, in a separate study, it was reported that only 1% of financed Internet start-ups are Black-owned.

It is this precise imbalance in corporate-backing and influence that has resulted in a soft liberal political leadership that supports these and worse conclusions. This is why those who claim grassroots end up not developing any counter-balance of power and in the end support a president who claims to want to extend broadband Internet while keeping it equal but then supports an FCC chair who seems not to want to fight a previous court decision which tells him he has no jurisdiction over the Internet and who develops a national broadband strategy which, according to one report, says that by 2012 75 percent of the country will have only one Internet service provider offering high-speed broadband Internet.

At the Obama’Laid Stand the Internet flavor is just as popular as the others. But it is still just a flavor. Whether war, race, jobs or the internet, this nation is simply stoned on the fundamental drug of Obama’Laid.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Jared Ball. Online go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

Jared Ball can be reached via email at: [email protected]

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