this week marks the second anniversary of barack obama's inauguration to the american presidency. i recall that blustery day in january 2008, standing in the freezing cold waiting to be let into the gates on the national mall in washington dc. i was excited and expectant, invested, having helped vote him into office. seven hours later, i was turned back with no luck. and i questioned, on that day, whether a government that could not control a crowd of millions could possibly govern them effectively either. nevertheless, in honor of the occasion, thought i'd repost a couple of my favorite blogs on the matter.

i wrote 'an open letter to michelle obama' 60 days after the inauguration. it's about my hopes and dreams, what it means for all of us to have a black first lady. oddly enough, it's still the most-read post i've ever written--largely by those googling 'michelle obama's legs,' a fact that has alternately amused and horrified me. given the nature of the post, however, it could be an apt subtitle.

and then there's 'climbing uphill' about my pre-election angst over whether or not to join the campaign effort. to be frank, over the past couple of years i've largely distanced myself from the whole thing. hope and change were basic, good ideas that i was all too eager to eat up. the reality on ground has been far more complicated, and has left me feeling horribly naive. though having been in naija almost four months now, during election season, i'm glad that america is a true democracy. the alternatives are far more distressing. --AL.

Today at work was so blessed to meet Ellen Schneider of Active Voice, formerly of PBS's POV, one of a handful of activists invited to a private White House briefing on the impact of grassroots arts, environmental, and social justice activism on US economic recovery.

First off, I don't know why there has been such paltry coverage of this meeting.

Secondly, I don't know why arts activists don't get out the vote better on their issues. If I were Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (also in attendance), of Urban Bush Women, I would have issued a press release around this briefing and some kind of "recommendation" to the Obama administration.

Lastly, I sincerely hope something substantive comes of this -- beyond a poetry jam @ Chez Obama, Michelle's recent meeting with arts leaders at the American Ballet, and the administration's 4% increase to the National Endowment of the Arts' budget, still a paltry sum.

Artists will continue to labor in poverty and obscurity, but I certainly hope the powers that be finally give them their due. I think artists can change the world.

One of my coworkers, a 62-years-young sista from Jersey, is keeping me hip. She buys a book @ Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem almost every week -- calls it "paying rent" -- and gets to hear a remarkable list of authors tell it in their own words. This week, Barbara Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks-Bertram on Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady. They sent out an online call for letters to the First Lady, and decided to publish them in a book. I copped one and was promptly brought to tears reading a letter by poet/writer Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, titled My Great-Great-Grandmother Talks to Michelle Obama:

     "Don't ever tell somebody they ain't got ta call you by your title, Baby. You humble, I know. Your beginnins is like so many women's and you wanna stay grounded and all that. Mmmhmmm. I understand and I think that's real good a you, but I'm a tell you something: you ain't just you. Nah-uh. You alla us. You you, sure. Daughter of Fraser Robinson and Marion Shields Robinson. Harvard and Princeton graduate. And you sho' do make us right proud. But you know, you dat woman with bleedin' hands workin' double shifts in the factory, and dat Mama ain't seen her kids since the drugs got hol' of her and messed up her mind...So when they call you First Lady you think about me and all them women ain't getting a sliver of light. You turn right nice and you answer. Baby, you answer for each and every one of us 'cause for the first time in the history of this here country we gonna be called by our true name."

It's been sixty days, Michelle. When I first heard your message of change and hope (and love, too), I couldn't wait for a bona fide woman -- sexy, smart, talented, graceful, and powerful -- to be the First Lady of the United States. Wanted so desperately to see you there because of the glorious disappointment that was Condolleezza, that woman who wasn't ours.

But you, Michelle, you are mine and my mother's and my mother's mother's. Like the old grandmother in Maya Angelou's poem, that I memorized in the fifth grade, who lay face down in the moist dirt muttering, "I shall not be moved," you staked a claim in the world of a million women long dead. Their spirits witnessed Obama's arrival on that cool, crisp day in January, but they really came to see you -- in all your glory, decked in gold that glittered and sparkled just as much as their dreams.

I was there, too. And I couldn't wait for your change to manifest in the world. To compare our dreams of transformation in our communities, nation, and around the globe.

I need you to tell me what a Harvard-educated healthcare executive from Chicago's South Side really thinks about sleeping in the same house as Eleanor Roosevelt once did. Tell me how you stayed focused in school, went corporate, but still kept your eye on the prize. How you reconciled your working class upbringing with the elitism attained through your education, while still remaining a down sista on the block. How you met your Barack, commanded the respect due a brilliant woman, won his hand, and raised two well-adjusted young women with high self esteem that will never compromise their self worth. How you inspired those girls, and your husband, to pursue their boundless potential in a racialized/sexist/classist world.

I want to be like you, Michelle: a black woman in a high profile position whom others can look up to and emulate. And I wonder if, when I get there, they'll be looking more at my arms and backside than my brains. Whether they'll be more interested in what I'm wearing than what I'm saying. Whether my power will be marginalized by my appearance and I will find myself in a cage on display for universal womanhood. I want it all, Michelle--for you and for me. To be all that we are in our infinite complexity, to command respect for our contributions, and to not be moved by other people's expectations of being mothered, coddled, and aroused by black female sexuality. I dream for you that world, but I also dream it for me.

And for all women who one day hope to be free.

Respectfully,

Iquo B. Essien ('Alligator Legs')

Update: Read my thoughts on the American Presidency two years after the inauguration here.