Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Harlem's Mae Jackson: When Obama Speaks, Whose Lips Move?
Bill Quigley
16 Jun 2009
🖨️ Print Article

If you don't see the video above, click here.

Mae Jackson is a New York City based writer, poet, dreamer and doer whose record of activism on behalf of her people stretches back to SNCC. A founder of Art Without Walls, an art program for the children of imprisoned women, she is well acquainted with the difference between surface change, and fundamental, revolutionary change.

Here are a few minutes of her address to the crowd at May 31, 2009 event memorializing the early 20th century Harlem activist Hubert Harrison, in which she lays out a clear understanding of whose lips move when our First Black President speaks. Referring to some of Barack Obama's widely acclaimed orations at the Democratic convention, atop Lincoln's tomb, and other places, she tells us

“..those wonderful speeches made by the young man from Chicago were actually crafted, that's written, by three young white men 25, 26 and 31 years old. We got the unfortunate opportunity once again to see the world through their eyes. Obama was the spokesperson. Same as when you buy a painting, that doesn't make you the painter...”

She explains how the establishment turned took the politics out of activism, neutralizing and de-politicizing young political activists by turning them into “community organizers."

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Israel's Recognition of Somaliland Destabilizes the Horn of Africa
    09 Jan 2026
    Israel is the first and only nation to recognize the Somaliland region of Somalia as an independent state. The zionist entity's plan to establish a military presence will enhance the U.S. decades-…
  • Venezuelan support for Maduro
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist , Larry Johnson
    U.S. Aggression Against Venezuela
    07 Jan 2026
    Director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, Ajamu Baraka, joins Spotlight on Press TV to analyze the latest developments in Venezuela, how and why this illegal…
  • The Editors
    Venezuela 2026: Black Agenda Report Special Issue
    07 Jan 2026
    Black Agenda Report Special Issue on Venezuela.
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Venezuela, Even More Than Palestine, Is the Linchpin of a Consistent Radical Left in The Era of Global Neofascism Led by the U.S.
    07 Jan 2026
    Solidarity with Palestine tests morality, but solidarity with Venezuela tests politics. The recent U.S. intervention demands a radical left moving from moral outrage to a material confrontation with…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: National Liberation: Categorical Imperative for the Peoples of Our Americas, Manuel Maldonado-Denis, 1982
    07 Jan 2026
    “The national independence struggles of the peoples of Our America have simultaneously been anti-imperialist struggles from Tupac Amaru up through our times.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us