African American protestors heckle Obama
2 hours ago
MIAMI (AFP) —
African American hecklers accused Barack Obama of ignoring the plight of the "oppressed" black community Friday, as a rare protest interrupted an appearance by the White House hopeful in Florida.
Three young men, holding a banner reading "what about the black community, Obama?" stood up as the Democratic presumptive nominee discussed economic issues during a townhall meeting in St Petersburg, Florida.
"What about the black community?" the protestors shouted, prompting Obama's supporters to chant his slogan "Yes We Can" to drown them out.
"Excuse me, young man, this is going to be a question and answer session, so you can ask a question later," Obama told one of the protestors.
"Sit down. You'll have a chance to ask your questions, but you don't want to disrupt the whole meeting. Just be courteous," he said, before going back to his prepared remarks.
The unidentified protestor was later given a microphone, and accused Obama of neglecting the African American community.
"Why is it that you have not had the ability to not one time speak to the interests and even speak on behalf of the oppressed and exploited African-American community, or black community in this country," he said.
Obama said the question was an example of "democracy at work."
"I think you're misinformed ... when you say not one time," Obama said.
"Every issue that you've spoken about, I actually did speak out of," he said, arguing he had condemned predatory mortgage practices which hurt African Americans and spoken out on various civil rights causes.
"I was a civil rights lawyer. I passed the first racial profiling legislation in Illinois.
"I passed some of the toughest death penalty reform legislation in Illinois so these are issues I've worked on for decades," he said.
"Now that doesn't mean that I'm going always satisfy the way you guys want these issues framed ... which gives you the option of voting for somebody else. It gives you the option to run for office yourself."
Obama then leveraged the confrontation, carried on US cable television networks, towards his core campaign message.
"The only way that we're going to solve our problems in this country is if all of us come together, black, white, Hispanic, Asians and native American, young, old, disabled, gay, straight."
Obama won huge support among African Americans during his Democratic primary campaign against Hillary Clinton.
But
last month, civil rights icon Jesse Jackson, in a lurid remark picked up by a television microphone, accused Obama of "talking down to black people," reviving the debate about race in the 2008 campaign.
Obama, son of a white mother from Kansas and a Kenyan father, has avoided billing himself as a "black candidate" even though he hopes to become the first African American president.
On Thursday, the campaign of Republican John McCain accused Obama of playing the "race card" after he said Republicans would try to highlight the fact that he did not look like other presidents featured on US dollar bills.
The Obama camp was still fuming at a McCain ad which used footage of Obama's European tour last week to suggest he was a vapid celebrity akin to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
"This is beneath him, it's beneath Senator McCain," top Obama strategist David Axelrod said on ABC.
"Now, to inject this race card issue, you know, it takes it one step beyond that."
But McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis hit back.
"I will not allow anyone in this campaign to attack John McCain on race, and it's never happened before, and it never will again, and we are not going to allow the Obama campaign to put this on the table," he said on ABC.
In Missouri Wednesday, Obama mocked the attacks he said were being mounted against him by McCain and his allies.
"You know, 'he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know, he's risky,'" Obama said, ridiculing supposed attacks against him.
Davis responded with a statement on Thursday.
"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong,"
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half joking.
Originally Posted by redhaze
, in the media, etc.
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)...but was apparently quite highly educated. 
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