How Hillary Clinton Won Harlem

Well worth the time to read.



Daily Intelligencer




February 17, 2016 9:32 a.m.



How Hillary Clinton Won Harlem

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/02/how-hillary-clinton-won-harlem.html
By Rembert Browne






Hillary Clinton met with civil-rights leaders at the National Urban League yesterday. Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images



“I thought we’d get that talk from Bernie, but it was Hillary,” the woman said as she took her seat in the restaurant. The man with her nodded his head in agreement, and then they sat in silence, attending to the world in their cell phones.

“Hey, soror,” a woman half-shouted a few minutes later, as she scooped food into her Styrofoam takeout box. The seated woman looked up, smiled, and responded, “Oh, hey, soror, you see Hillary?”

“She was real good, right,” the woman making her plate said, now at a different food station. All three nodded their heads, almost causing me to join in even though I was not a part of the conversation. All of this took place at Manna’s, the self-anointed “Best Soul Food Restaurant in the Village of Harlem.” I religiously get a four-vegetable plate there whenever I go to an event at the Schomburg Center, the New York Public Library’s hub for black culture, which sits on the corner of 135th and Malcolm X.

The venue is having a big week. On Monday it was revealed as the inspiration of this week’s New Yorker cover art by painter Kadir Nelson (work titled Schomburg Center, Harlem, New York). On Tuesday it was the site of a Hillary Clinton speech, advertised a day earlier as an “Address on Breaking Down Barriers for African-Americans.”

On paper, this all felt very political. Hillary … in Harlem … talking to black people … about black people … and the timing only added to that sentiment, a week after getting beat by 20 points in New Hampshire, a week before heading into the much blacker state of South Carolina. Arriving at the Schomburg, the lobby was stuffed with people waiting to get in — most drenched from the monsoon taking place outside — many confused by the delay that comes with any Hillary event, by way of the near-hour Secret Service sweep that is required before she takes any stage. At one point during the wait, the crowd’s attention focuses toward one corner. “Oh, apparently, that’s Bill,” one man says. A few seconds later, he says, “Wrong Bill — it’s de Blasio.”

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Finally, he introduced one of the neighborhood’s most famous (and in recent years, infamous) sons, Representative Charlie Rangel. The 85-year-old Rangel walked out on the stage, but not without a crew. Following him, Mayor de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray, Governor Cuomo and his partner, Sandra Lee, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and Hillary Clinton.

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There was one moment in Rangel’s introduction, however, when his presence — and his actions — were undeniably infectious to everyone in the room, especially the Black Harlemites: “It’s been brought to my attention that some people have been following the secretary of State around to disrupt rather than to instruct. Please be informed, you are in the village of Harlem.”

This was met with wild applause from the room, a big smile from Hillary, and a Holder whisper to Cuomo, followed by laughs from both men. It was one of the more street-cred-pumping moments this campaign has seen. You fuck with Hill, you fuck with Harlem. And it capped off a perfect warm-up act for Hillary — New York State, New York City, and Harlem supporting not only Hillary being the next president, but her as someone who could do a lot of good for black people.



Then it hit you that Hillary was going to talk — at length — about black people, almost exclusively....................................

I genuinely couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The tiptoeing had vanished. ...........................