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Obama takes campaign to Martin Luther King church
Jan 20, 2008, 18:20 GMT
Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. EPA/LOUIE TRAUB
Washington - US presidential contender Barack Obama urged Americans Sunday to overcome lingering barriers for black citizens, evoking the spirit of Martin Luther King at the church where the 1960s civil rights leader preached.
Fresh from a defeat by Hillary Clinton in a Democratic Party preference poll, Obama stopped by the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to mark the late Reverend King's birthday and rally African-American voters behind a vision of national unity for political change.
'In the struggle for justice and for equality, we cannot walk alone,' declared Obama, 46. 'In the struggle to heal this nation and repair the world, we cannot walk alone. And so I ask you to walk with me.'
Obama, who would be the nation's first African-American president, told the Sunday sermon audience that blacks also must address 'deep-seated violence,' anti-Semitism and anti-gay sentiment in their community.
'All of us will be called upon to make some sacrifice,' he said.
Clinton, 60, beat Obama in Saturday's Democratic caucuses in Nevada, the latest in a series of state-by-state preference polls to determine the party's presidential candidate.
South Carolina, the first state with a major black electorate, holds the Democrats' next contest on January 26.
In a swipe at Clinton, Obama criticized other candidates who have mocked his core campaign message: that he can restore a sense of hope in the US when President George W Bush's eight-year term ends next January.
He won over the Atlanta congregation with his personal story - a multiracial child abandoned by his Kenyan father at age two, raised by his white mother from Kansas and rising to attend Harvard and win a US Senate seat.
'The odds of me standing here are so small, so remote, I couldn't have gotten here without some hope,' he said.
He repeatedly drew distant parallels between his campaign and King's struggle for black civil rights and desegregated southern US states in the 1950s and '60s. King, a Nobel Peace laureate, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, sparking riots in dozens of US cities.
His January 15, 1929 birthday is being marked as an official holiday Monday. King's elder sister, Christine Farris King, was in the audience Sunday.
Obama centred on the nation's African-American minority, which traditionally leans heavily Democratic and may be crucial to his bid to win the party's nomination to run for president.
He cited a 'moral deficit' in the US, including 'profound structural and institutional barriers' that still exist for blacks and 'the insidious role that race still sometimes plays on the job and in the schools, our health care, in our criminal justice system.'
Overcoming the obstacles requires a national effort, including the money to pay for it, he said.
The church's pastor, the Reverend Raphael G Warnock, said Obama made plain that while some blacks died to win the right to vote, 'now we can run for president.'
'We invited this brother because he's committed, he's brilliant, he has a spiritual foundation and he is the embodiment of the American dream,' Warnock said.
© 2008 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
If this is all he's got, he's already done.
Obama's big mistake was to play into Hillary's front. He could have stood out and told the American public the truth, that race no longer drives societal development in the U.S. but instead, he dropped back 45 years and played her game, instead of having game of his own.
The shortcoming of this philosophy of this so-called christian church is that so many people, like Obama, for instance, are not all that black, so who gets the privilege of drawing the line on blackness? Adolf Hitler? Lou Farakahn? Which person gets to play god? So much for all men being equal...
Not the mark of a bright guy, a person who buys into this creed. Hardly what King had in mind, wouldn't you say?
So much for all men being equal...
Unfortunately not all men are equal, some like sp4 have severe cognitive difficulties.
...but it does not make me wrong. What it makes you is a bonehead for the simple insult.
Besides, go look up the 'Black Value System' and replace the word 'black' with 'White' and see what you think it sounds like when you read it.....
Why would anything that SP4 (idiot) says bother anyone or have anything near the truth to it?
We all know he is the bigot of the board so anything he says 'makes him wrong'. What an idiot!
It seems that SP4 has a lot of people who don't like him but can't challenge the points he has made.
piss on kings grave
why can't you challenge sp4 ?
is this creep some kind of idol?
waste time challenging him? Anything that doesn't reek of Republican will be shot down regardless, and who should give a rat's ass what he thinks or get all worked up over his rantings. He seems to have a copious amount of time on his hands - he needs this outlet. Only the future will tell us who was or wasn't the best candidate. No one person will be able to carry out exactly the program they want - it takes a lot of people surrounding them to try to work together and agree. The best we can hope for is that it won't be another Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld fiasco!!
...as usual, another set of empty shirts.
Obama is a good man for politics, but as a President, what can he really do for America? Judah Ben-Hur for President, 2012 will solve these issues.
'Why
waste time challenging him?'
So you won't sound like a moron. If you disagree with him challenge what he has said, don't attack him for saying it.
'Anything that doesn't reek of Republican will be shot down regardless,'
Poor thing, I guess you are at his mercy then. If your argument was clever enough then it would be you shooting him down.
'and who should give a rat's ass what he thinks or get all worked up over his rantings.'
You evidentially, since you follow his every post with some silly remark it is clear that YOU give a rats ass what he thinks.
'He seems to have a copious amount of time on his hands - he needs this outlet.'
Does that make him incorrect?
' Only the future will tell us who was or wasn't the best candidate. '
If that is your opinion fine, others disagree. Instead of whining that they disagree why don't you persuade them that they are wrong...If you can. If not it could be that you are the one who is incorrect.
For your info, I've posted very little here. And further, I'm an Independent, but still stand by my observations. As for SP4 being incorrect - I didn't say he was, only that he is closed to anything other than Republican and is probably the only one of 10 in the country who worships the ground Bush walks on. But I don't care. What he says doesn't make him right or wrong and not everyone is going to bother to send a long, drawn-out spiel to try to claim otherwise. And what I remarked about him is mild compared to most protests to his essays!!! Go bark up their tree if you have a gripe!
“We are an African people and remain true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”
ummm..then why isn't you's in Kenya helping them people..take Al and Jesse with ya's....MLK was smart and had dreams....you 3 need to quit living off the deads inspirations and fame.
Compare Europe to Africa of today and the numbers and facts just dont add up smoothly.
Europe and the USA are the most advanced and poor Africa is in the dustbin of history.
If Africa was ever great than what happened and why is Europe so advanced today?
Africa is suffering and should have something to show of its great past, but multiculturalists and PC people would try to say different things.
Simply, it is more lies being spread about the western world and lies should not go unchallenged.
Ever hear of Rome, Byzantium, British Empire, French Empire, the Russian Empires, the Renaissaince, the Industrial Revolution, etc.
Sorry, Europe and the US are and were always the top dogs.
page: 1
FYIJan 20th, 2008 - 19:30:49
“We are a congregation which is unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian,” says the Trinity United Church of Christ’s website in Chicago. “We are an African people and remain true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.”
Obama says he found religion and Jesus Christ through Wright, whom he met in the mid-1980s. He has been attending Wright’s church regularly since 1988.
That’s just the beginning. The church has a “non-negotiable commitment to Africa,” according to its website, and its pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. subscribes to what is called the Black Value System.
Google 'Black Value System'
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