“Selling” the President on 125th street

Photo Credit: Diya Chacko

Street vendors have comfortably parked themselves on every block of Harlem’s bustling 125th St. to hawk incense, homemade CDs and self-published urban literature. Some booths are piled high with T-shirts, many featuring the face of President Obama.

There are Obama bobblehead dolls and pins in addition to stacks of T-shirts on Victoria Lassiter’s table between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. “The neighbors call me ‘Obama Central,’” said Lassiter, 57, who has been selling Obama memorabilia since the beginning of 2008. “He’s a popular, in-demand item.” She also said that while sales have gone down compared to the rush for memorabilia just after the election, support for Obama within the Harlem community has been unwavering.

In the 68th New York County Assembly District, one of two that encompasses Harlem, an overwhelming 41,321 out of 45,563 people voted for Obama and Vice President Biden on the Democratic ticket, according to the New York City Board of Elections. In the 70th Assembly District, which represents Harlem, Morningside Heights, and Manhattanville, the votes added up to 48,597 out of 51,531 in favor of Obama.

On the night of November 4, 2008, hundreds of Harlemites gathered in front of a giant video screen outside the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building on 125th St. and Seventh Ave. to watch the election results, including 49-year-old Timothy Stockton. Stockton, who works across the street in the Studio Museum Harlem, said that when the winner was announced, he began to cry.

“Since he’s been elected, he’s been inspiring people in Harlem to make changes in the community,” said Stockton, who has lived in Harlem for 30 years. “Now groups are organizing to stop gang violence, to push for more African-Americans in office.”

When it comes to national politics and issues such as health care, Harlem, Stockton says, backs the president. Stockton is highly in favor of Obama’s government health care plan, including the much-debated public option that will allow competition with private insurance companies. “The [Harlem] community does not have a lot of wealthy people, and this would really help them,” he said, adding that Obama needs to tell the conservatives opposed to the plan “to put the shut to the up.”

Dr. Annie Martin, one of New York’s representatives on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People board of directors, urged NAACP members at a meeting on Oct. 25 to write to their local senators in support of the government health care plan. “Our organization has withstood all these changes over time,” she said of the NAACP, founded in New York City in 1909. “We have to step up and become part of something with strength.”

The meeting was held in the small, diamond-shaped interior of the Mount Pisgah Church on 119th St. and Fifth Ave. Reverend Esau German, the church’s assistant minister, said that he trusts Obama based on his obvious strength of character. “The first time I heard him talk, I was amazed,” German, 60, said. “As any preacher will tell you, you have to be able to really speak to your congregation to get their attention.”

After the meeting, Majella Mark, 23, said that she did intend to write a letter of support for the plan. “Obama makes the choices he needs to make so that the country can progress,” said Mark, who has been a Harlem NAACP member for eight months. “He’s doing well considering Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Riverside Church member Jacob Terrell, 62, agreed with Mark that Obama hasn’t had enough time to implement the changes he promised. “People assumed he was going to do everything in five minutes,” Terrell said. “Everybody has their own political agenda that they want done ASAP, to the detriment of other people’s wants.”

Lermond Mayes, the district office director for the New York City Council, said that he originally helped campaign for Obama in New York before the Democratic primary elections in 2008. “I understand it’s been very difficult to make these changes to health care, especially in these hard economic times,” said Mayes after a recent meeting of Harlem’s Community Board 10 elected officials. “But Obama needs to use his political clout to press Congress to get his policies initiated. Sometimes compromise can go on too long and people suffer.”

Mayes said that many vital community programs had their budgets slashed owing to the recession, such as Meals on Wheels. In 2009, the home-delivered meals program was restructured so that meals were delivered frozen rather than fresh, three times a week rather than five times a week, in order to save money after the New York City Department of Aging’s budget was cut by $4 million, according to a Feb. 17 Reuters article. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed a further budget elimination of $1.4 million in home-delivered meals to seniors in his Fiscal Year 2010 Preliminary Budget report.

“We’re going to need federal assistance for community programs in trouble, and I think it’s right that the President give back to the people who gave so much to him,” said Mayes.

The Schomberg Center for Research of Black Culture, on 135th St. and Malcolm X Blvd., has installed a giant window exhibit titled “African Americans and American Politics.” The exhibit, which spans almost the entire block, tracks the history of every prominent black politician since the 1700s with text, drawings and photographs from the Center’s archives. The introductory panel of the exhibit says, “Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th president of the United States, stands on the shoulders of all those African Americans who struggled to advance the cause of freedom, justice, and human dignity for black people as well as all of humankind.”

The Center’s tour coordinator, 23-year-old Megan Harris, said that the exhibit was created primarily to show that Obama was not the first African American to be involved in American politics. Harris, who gives tours to many school groups, also said that many local school children were not being taught about the full history of black politicians. “People were very excited when we put this up during the [presidential] inauguration ceremony,” Harris said. “They said ‘We never learned this in our classes’.”

On Oct. 9, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” This decision sparked even more debate over whether or not he even deserved it. Another Harlem resident, Johnnie Davis, said that he thinks Obama hasn’t, and won’t be able to do much to effect change if he keeps trying to compromise with those who oppose him. “He’s got some heart and soul,” said Davis, 26, “but he’s still playing by the white man’s rules.”

Karen Rose, another Riverside Church member, agreed somewhat. “Obama is a lot more conservative than I had imagined him to be,” she said. However, Rose, 33, still felt that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. “He stands for peace,” she said. “Just that fact has opened a lot of doors for this country.” Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland himself praised Obama’s approach to international politics in an Oct. 10 New York Times article, saying, “There is great potential…at least we want to embrace the message that he stands for.”

Elhajj Payne, owner of the Unique Boutique clothing store on Lenox Ave., said that he felt Obama deserved the award “not for what he has done, but for what he has the potential to do,” which was the sentiment of 15 people interviewed. “He’s taken lead of a country in all kinds of mess already,” said Payne, 35. “He had the courage to do that, even with all the struggles he’s going through right now.”

Payne’s store, which has been open for 10 years, also sells Obama T-shirts and hats pinned to a clothesline across the top of the store window. He has a calendar with pictures of the president that he proudly displays at the cash register. “People in this community understand struggle, though,” Payne continued. “We know we can trust him to make things better.”