Inauguration Day: How Emancipated Are We Really?

That's not my question.

It belongs to communist Laura Flanders, at the Guardian UK, "At Obama's second inauguration, how emancipated are we really?"

She attempts, rather badly, to make some historical analogies to current American politics, but her bottom line is this paragraph:

How emancipated are we today? It depends on whom you talk to and which questions you ask. Judged against slavery, today's society is relatively free – but what a standard! To recall the Eldridges and Tubman, the means that people need to live freely are still stratified, and along the old tracks. Quality education, housing, work, health; we've legislated away the old "whites only" signs, but look at wealth, the most decisive indicator of access to any of those things.

Freedom for communists is economic equality. It does not matter that President Obama is being elected to a second term and that that's not a deal. We crossed that racial milestone four years ago. It can be done.

BONUS: A Flanders interview at the Stalinist Counterpunch Magazine, "An Interview with Laura Flanders on Alexander Cockburn."