By Patricia Wilson-Smith

As the 2012 Presidential Election makes its way towards the ever-important party nominating conventions, African Americans in this country are busy waging a quiet war within over its continued support of President Obama.

The issue? His personal stance on same sex marriage.

Just this week, a group calling itself The Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) announced that they will actively oppose President Obama’s re-election bid on the basis of his evolved opinion of same sex-unions. As a “…grass roots movement of African American Christians who believe in family values”, they apparently liken gay marriage to something so heinous that they’re willing to cede the election to a party whose policies have done more to wreck the American family than anything else in this country ever could.

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The historic Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, is a tremendous victory for millions of Americans—especially women. By upholding the health reform law, the Supreme Court will allow significant reforms to our health insurance system to be fully implemented, keeping health care costs down and protecting Americans from the health insurance industry’s worst abuses.

Here are the top five ways Obamacare helps women in particular:

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By Patricia Wilson-Smith

It’s easy I suppose to get lost in the political theater of the recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld most major tenets of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) if you let yourself. I know I did. The photo attached to this particular post is making its way around the web, supposedly having caught the exact moment that both Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi found out about the court’s ruling. What red-blooded progressive worth anything wouldn’t relish the look on Boehner’s face, if in fact it is a snapshot of that very moment? Heck, there’s comedy here whatever the context!

Yes – it would be very easy for Progressives to slap each other on the back, and laugh out loud about “winning”, as if we were Charlie Sheen doing an interview while in a drug-induced stupor, but if you’re like me, once the reality of what the Supreme Court left in place hits you, you’d sober up pretty quickly, and start thinking about how very close we may have come to going back to a truly unacceptable state in this country. A state in which everything that the President and Democrats in Congress have spent the last three-plus years fighting for could have become a political pile of rubble, requiring a brand new round of sorting through to try and put some semblance of the original bill back together.  A state where meanwhile, elderly Americans would continue to be  forced into bankruptcy over the cost of their medications, and where 45,000 would continue to die each year from lack of insurance. That state.

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The individual health insurance mandate is constitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, upholding the central provision of President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act.

The controlling opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld the mandate as a tax, although concluded it was not valid as an exercise of Congress’ commerce clause power. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined in the outcome.

The decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius comes as something of a surprise after the generally hostile reception the law received during the six hours of oral arguments held over three days in March. But by siding with the court’s four Democratic appointees, Chief Justice Roberts avoided the delegitimizing taint of politics that surrounds a party-line vote while passing Obamacare’s fate back to the elected branches. GOP candidates and incumbents will surely spend the rest of the 2012 campaign season running against the Supreme Court and for repeal of the law.

Five justices concluded that the mandate, which requires virtually all Americans to obtain minimum health insurance coverage or pay a penalty, falls within Congress’ power under the Constitution to “lay and collect taxes.”
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Remember how far we’ve come! From Academy Award®-winning director Davis Guggenheim: “The Road We’ve Traveled”. We were there at the beginning, Black Women for Obama, and it’s time for us to gear up and get it done again!

Beloved BWFO Readers,

On Friday, May 20th, I received a response to a Craig’s List ad soliciting contributors for this blog.  The response came from a woman named Jan B. who is an apparent supporter of Herman Cain’s. I thought her email to me was fascinating, and my response to her even more fascinating (I kid), and both are included below. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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Jan’s Email:

My Response:

Dear Jan,

I absolutely love it when total strangers email me making a bunch of assumptions about what I do or don’t know. I think one of my biggest problems with Conservatives (of all varieties) is the tendency some of you have to spout rhetorical nonsense about “Czars”, and the Government threatening to arrest people for not maintaining their health care for no other reason than to scare people. But you want to talk about health care? Let’s.

My mother lived with me for 5 years, after she lost her kidney function and was later diagnosed with breast cancer. After 60+ years of paying into the Medicare and Social Security systems as a contributing member of society, her medical bills were so high that she and I were both forced into bankruptcy. She was too sick to walk, but she had to suffer the humiliation of going to court to speak on her own behalf regarding her astronomical medical bills. It was horrible – we were defenseless against the high costs of her care, and powerless to do anything about the skyrocketing costs as they mounted.

The truly sad thing is, my mother’s is not the worst story I’ve heard regarding the state of health care in America. People are literally dying because they don’t have access to health care, in the RICHEST NATION IN THE WORLD! If you can’t see why that’s a problem, then you’re soul-less, and it’s a waste of time to debate you. I’m not saying that the Health Care bill is perfect – far from it. But beleaguering the fact that one might potentially be fined for not maintaining health coverage in a society where you can literally be jailed for not maintaining liability insurance on your CAR is a little silly.

You dilute your point by saying things like “His [Obama's] policies and the corrupted individuals who co-side with  him are here to destroy the America you live in.” It makes you sound like a zealot intent on turning everyone you meet against Obama just because. And as for Herman Cain – I’m very familiar with Mr. Cain. I listened to his show here locally in Atlanta when he was still on the air. I respect him as a business man, and a fellow technologist, but he supports most of the same policies that nearly drove this country into a ditch over the last decade, so I can’t support him. I don’t care what his race is. And I think that’s the most offensive thing of all about your email.

You assume I support President Obama because of his race. That demeans me, and him. If you’d wandered across my blog back in 2007, you’d have found that in the beginning, I was quite torn between Obama and Clinton, and in fact, only made my decision to support Obama after researching his policies, reading his book, and a whole lot of soul searching, since even I back then didn’t hold out a lot of hope that he could win in this country. So, again – you minimize the effectiveness of your argument by making blanket assumptions – let’s debate the issues, not hurl baseless accusations. It doesn’t help the collective dialog.

Thanks for responding to my Craig’s List ad, though it certainly was not the kind of response I was after. It’s even more important now than ever that we have these conversations, but we also all must do what we can to make sure our conversations are productive and responsible. I hope you’ll join me in that. I await your response.

Patricia Wilson-Smith
Executive Director, Black Women for Obama

By Patricia Wilson-Smith

It’s been a long time since I lent my voice to any debate. Life has taken some twists and turns, and I’ve been busy holding on for dear life. But it’s time to blow the dust off my laptop.

I’ve kept a keen watch as the health care reform debate has raged; I’ve watched earlier on as the Democrats did everything they could to woo the likes of Olympia Snowe, who of course supported health care reform just long enough to vote it down once the Senate bill was up for a vote. I’ve watched as the large insurance companies skillfully rallied the well-meaning, but sometimes painfully ignorant radical right to protest in very ugly public ways against reform, screaming and yelling at the tops of their lungs for “the government to keep its hands off of Medicare.”

And I’ve even watched President Obama try with all his might to take a bi-partisan approach to reforming health care, over and over again, reaching out to one Republican or another, only to hit the brick-hard wall of truth that is the right’s complete inability to see beyond their political aims. And I’ve watched the media, who in their zeal to report on each new development, gave voice to the legions of morons around the country who educate themselves by watching 30-second soundbites on cable news, while thousands and thousands of people struggle or die because this country is too consumed with the spectacle of the debate to just get this right.

I’m sick and tired of this. I want health care reform for this country and I want it now! I don’t have to tell anyone this, but it bears repeating – we are the only western nation that does not provide some form of universal health care for its citizens, and that fact alone should be enough to warrant a change. The problem is, those who oppose health care reform have done a masterful job up to now of scaring the bejeezus out of the American people with stories of ‘health care rationing’, and ’6-month waits’ for treatment. Even though the facts just don’t prove these scare tactics out.

I recently visited London, England and spent time with my husband’s lovely family. I had a blast – I sat around the dinner table with cousins, and nephews, and uncles, and we laughed about the differences in life in the United Kingdom and the States. Mostly, we joked about innocuous things like our use of the word ‘cookie’ and their use of the word ‘biscuit’; how we call the storage areas in our cars ‘trunks’, and they call them ‘boots’; we even joked about how the U.K. really has no concept of an SUV because their streets are too narrow to accommodate them.

But when the talk turned to health care, things toned down a bit. I asked the questions I’d been dying to ask since this debate first begin to rage in this country, when lawmakers were warning us not to look to England’s National Health Care System as a model for care here. I asked them – “are you guys happy with the level of care you get under your system?”

The answer I got was a resounding, “yes”. And what’s worse, because they have access to the very same cable stations that we do, they get to see the lies and misrepresentations being regularly disseminated in the American media, and they’re dumbfounded. For the most part, they are perfectly happy with the level of care they receive, accepting of the level of taxation it takes to support the system, and had no horror stories to tell about long waits, poor care, rationing – nothing.

In particular, my mother in law recently had heart bypass surgery to clear up a blocked artery. She raved about the experience – how she visited her doctor when she wasn’t feeling well, how quickly she was diagnosed, and how even more quickly she was admitted to the hospital and how well she was treated. The whole experience of discussing England’s health care system with my new family left me confused, and aware that I had bought into the lies more than I’d realized.

According to Wikipedia, an independent survey conducted in 2004 found that 92% of British hospital inpatients were satisfied with the level of care they received; 87% of outpatients were satisfied with their treatment. If you don’t trust Wikipedia, how about Gallup? In March of 2009, Gallup reported the results of a survey of residents of OECD nations, and guess what? The United States lags behind the UK in overall satisfaction with our respective health care systems. Let THAT one sink in.

And so I have no choice but to believe that the vehement opposition to either a truly universal single payor system, or its weaker younger brother, the public option, is the evil creation of health care lobbyists and the pathetic members of Congress who would rather continue to align themselves with their benevolent benefactors than stop the carnage that is being caused by our current health care system. I am no expert when it comes to these issues, but I don’t exactly hear anyone disputing the fact that each year 45,000 Americans are dying simply because they’re uninsured. And it’s an undeniable fact that millions of Americans each year are being driven into bankruptcy because of out of control costs, while greedy insurance companies yank their coverage just when they need it most to maximize profits and secure the bloated bonuses going to their inept CEOs. My mother was one of those people who was driven into bankruptcy by medical bills. After decades of working hard and taking care of her family, she had to suffer the humiliation of declaring bankruptcy all because our country won’t do enough to provide for it’s citizens. It makes me sick to my stomach.

So it’s time stop talking about this now, just as President Obama says. There’s too much at stake – too many lives, and I believe the future financial viability of our nation. When President Obama and other Democrats say that our current health care system is not sustainable, I believe them. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. People are using Emergency Rooms as last-chance health providers, often when they’ve neglected their health for so long, there’s nothing that can be done for them. Employers are gearing up to begin shifting more health care costs to already cash-strapped American families, and the cost of health care has risen 2.4% faster than the GPD since 1970. Our system is a freight train running down hill, and it’s time to stop it.

We have a unique opportunity right now, today. We can either keep walking around like zombies, acting as though we’re powerless to get anything done, or we can drop everything for five minutes, get off of FaceBook or Twitter, or whatever our social network of choice is and call our representatives and DEMAND that they pass a bill now! I’ve had it with this crap! We need to extinguish pre-existing condition denials now! We need to insure the 30 plus million Americans who have no insurance now! We need to ease the financial burden on American workers, the elderly, and we need to do it now! If you do nothing else today, call your representative and tell them – we’re tired of the games, we’re tired of the political spin, we’re just plain tired! Pass the friggin’ bill already! DO IT NOW!

To find your representative, visit the site below:

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

It’s crunch time. Blow the dust off YOUR laptop or telephone and make your voice heard.

By Patricia Wilson-Smith

I wrote a book a couple of years ago called “Duped By Love”, and in that book, I had a great time making fun of how the media here in the A.T.L. loves to walk the streets of the worst neighborhoods, looking for stuff to report on, and trying to find the least articulate person on the planet to interview about whatever newsworthy thing has taken place.
Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean.

A young black man is a witness to a drive by shooting, and describes what he saw with a heavy dirty South accent. A middle-aged black woman witnesses a domestic disturbance, and through barely decipherable English, recounts the tale to the reporter and camera man who have her framed against a background of urban desolation, eager to exploit her for the amusement of their audience. I HATE that crap.

There is no denying it – in cities and states around the country, the news media make it a point to seek out those that they feel will portray the black man, woman, and sometimes even the black voter in the worst light possible. Enter Derrick Ashong and a CNN reporter known only as “Mike”.

On January 31st, Derrick Ashong, a 32-year old musician found himself pulled into the fray of the Democratic debate being held at the Kodak Theatre. He was talked into standing outside the event and holding an Obama sign by a good friend. Now, it must be noted, that to look at Mr. Ashong is to see nothing particularly special. Outwardly, he looks like any other street kid, and if we were to be 100% honest with ourselves, he has the exact look of someone that some people might cross the street rather than confront face to face for fear of being robbed or worse. Yes – outwardly, Derrick Ashong could be the poster child for the image of young black men that the media has taught the viewing public to fear.

So I’m fairly certain it was with this (and ratings) in mind that a CNN cameraman/reporter walked up to Derrick Ashong and asked him pointedly, and rather rudely why he supports Senator Obama. I’m ashamed to admit, that when I was first told to watch the video, and the first few seconds rolled across the screen, I felt a certain discomfort over what was coming.

You see, in an age where people often amuse themselves by recording each other’s most idiotic moments and publishing them to YouTube for the entire world to see, I was certain that what I was about to be treated to was more of the same. I can distinctly recall that I felt that pang of dread that I often feel when viewing some new example of blatant black stereotyping by the media. I felt it, yes I did. But I sat there and made myself watch, and I continued to listen – and what I saw and heard brought pure joy to my heart.

Mike the CNN reporter hammered Mr. Ashong with probing question after probing question about why he was standing outside the Kodak Theatre that day in support of Senator Obama. At first, Derrick gave a few canned answers that sounded suspiciously like something you might pick up from Obama paraphernalia. And so Mike probed more deeply. He asked Derrick about the candidates’ health care plans, how they would be funded, he asked him about socialized medicine, and the likely economic impact of an Obama Health care plan – and as the questions grew more complex, Derrick Ashong proceeded to school both Mike the CNN reporter and me on the superior aspects of the Obama plan, and why it makes the most sense for the nation.

And it’s not just that he beat back an obvious attempt to make an Obama Supporter look substance-less – he did it with so much finesse, authority and in such a knowledgeable way, that the reporter had no choice but to allow himself to be drawn into an engaging conversation with a young man who was obviously his intellectual equal, and abandon what I am convinced was meant to be an opportunity to show the world that young black men, and the youth of this country in general are rallying behind Senator Obama like the unwitting victims of some pied piper, or like groupies to a rock star. Wow.

Derrick Ashong single-handedly destroyed about half-a-dozen stereo types in the space of 6 minutes during that interview. He proved, first, that young black men do much more than sit around smoking weed all day waiting for opportunities to rob and loot, as is so often portrayed in the media. Secondly, he showed that even the very young can be extremely well-versed in the issues of the day, and knowledgeable of the candidates they support. Thirdly – in casually announcing that his father was a pediatrician, he showed the reporter that young black men can be the product of good homes, headed up by educated professionals, and that not all black men standing around on a street corner come from broken homes.

Fourth – he shattered the myth that the typical Obama supporter is just somehow ‘in-love’ with the Senator, or only on the campaign’s bandwagon because Senator Obama makes good speeches. Fifth – he proved that even someone who has made a conscious decision to be a musician can still be politically engaging, and an intellectual. Sixth, he dispelled the myth that young voters don’t understand what’s at stake in this election – I could go on and on and on.

The bottom line is, it seems like lately, every day in every way, we are beginning to get the proof that our nation is turning a corner. We are beginning to really get a flavor for the power our diversity gives us as a country. You see, Derrick Ashong is an immigrant from Ghana, educated here in the states. He is young and passionate, but old enough to recall that there was a time when he lived in a land where he did not have the right to vote. His command of the issues was amazing, his enthusiasm for Senator Obama clear. The reporter repeatedly (at first) chided him about providing ‘technical’ answers, and not just ‘emotion’ to support his positions. So in the face of what most would consider to be grilling on the part of the CNN reporter, he kept a cool head, and stuck to the facts.

The video of his interview that day has been played on YouTube by hundreds of thousands of people, and has become so popular that he’s been accused of being an Obama plant, which is ridiculous when you think about it. But to answer the nay-sayers, he produced a follow-up that he calls ‘The Emotional Response’, and if the first video impresses the heck out of you, this one will move you beyond belief.

In it, he discusses his love for this country, his unique ethnic background, and his appreciation of our democracy. He talks about why it is so important that we figure out a way to get past our differences, and come together for the good of our country. Sound familiar?

The beauty and the power of what occurred outside the Kodak Theater that day cannot be overstated. Out there that day, two men, one white and one black, bridged both an age and racial chasm, to find common agreement on an important political issue. What happened out there that day? Without trying to, one young man showed America the face of yet another black man who cares more about the collective well being of our country than he does about any singular racial or socio-economic group. What happened was that Derrick Ashong validated what Senator Obama has often said in his writings and in his speeches. “I know they’re out there”, he says in the ‘Audacity of Hope’. “Those people who are tired of politics as usual, and want a different kind of politics”. He showed America that not only are they out there, but they might show up in the most surprising ways, wrapped in the most unlikely packages.

Thank you Derrick, for being the very definition of ‘representin’.

By Steffini Bethea

This past Saturday, I went to delegate training in Atlanta. As I sat through the training, the gentleman that served as the facilitator mentioned several times (in jest) that being a delegate allowed you access to “ALL OF THE PARTIES”! That sounds like fun to me but I also had to sit back and think, “Why exactly do I want to go to Denver in August?” Now don’t get me wrong, I want to party like everyone else, but there is also a deeper more relevant reason. My reason has nothing and everything to do with Senator Barack Obama.
The reasons that have nothing to do with Senator Obama are:
A broken system that has my 68 year old father still having to teach in the Detroit public school system because he can’t quite yet “afford to retire.” (Fortunately, he does love his job)

A broken system that forced my mother to retire earlier than she wanted because after working 20 years at Ford Motor Company as a Systems Analyst, her job was outsourced to India.

A broken system that allowed my Aunt Pat to lose the $250,000 home that she owned outright because she could not pay a $40,000 medical bill once she became disabled.

A broken system that has allowed 2 of my friends to lose their homes to foreclosure.

A broken system that does not offer affordable healthcare for me and my family. It would cost my family of 6, $800/month for coverage. My husband and I are self employed.

A broken system that has my 65 year old mother-in-law still having to work at that school cafeteria, on the railroad tracks in Dillon, S.C., that Senator Obama always speaks of.

A broken system that has schools in Gwinnett County not making AYP because of the language barrier due to the influx of immigrants legal and illegal.

A broken system that has the elderly and sickly having to stay indoors on those days that we have a smog alert.

A broken system that has me paying $55 to fill up my car, while Exxon/Mobil just had a profit of $46 billion. (Somebody explain that to me PLEASE!)

A broken system that has cost some relatives, and children, of friends of mine to lose their lives in Iraq.

A broken system that has moved me out of the comfort of my previous neighborhood, just so that my children can get the best education.

A broken system that has millions uninsured, losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing hope!

Am I bitter? No! I am however, sick and tired of politics as usual! I want to go to Denver in August to cast a vote for CHANGE. That vote has everything to do with Senator Barack Obama. Tiger Woods was an agent of change for golf after he won the Masters in Augusta. Venus and Serena Williams became agents of change and now Black folks actually attend Wimbledon and the US Open. Magic Johnson became an agent of change for the NBA with the “Fast Break”. Doug Williams became an agent of change for the NFL after Super Bowl XXII. RUN DMC was an agent of change for Hip Hop. Spike Lee was an agent of change for Black filmmakers. Oprah, well she has just changed the game period (smile). I want to go to Denver to cast my vote for CHANGE on behalf of, my Aunt Pat, my mother in law, my parents, my best friends, my kids, my county, state, country and the 7th Congressional District. I believe Senator Obama will be an agent of change for OUR future!

If you happen to live in the 7th Congressional District in Georgia and are a registered voter, please support me by attending the Caucus on Saturday April 19, 2008. Help me get to Denver to vote for change.