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DE LEON IS RUNNING
FOR PRESIDENT
By LaToya Evans
Over the past couple of months, the media has
flooded our homes with speculation over who will
be the next President of the United States.
Amongst these candidates for the highest
executive position in this country, is President
Goerge W. Bush, and Senator John Kerry; but,
there is one presidential candidate not widely
publicized by the press. Yes, you guessed it;
Aya De Leon is Running for President.
Of course she isn't really running for
President, but this black and Puerto Rican
spoken word artist visited the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Stone Center on
September 10 to address a sold out audience
about the upcoming election and how it affects
the black community. Ms. De Leon is a 1991
graduate of Harvard University, a published
essayist, upcoming author, and spoken-word
extraordinaire. When asked why she wanted to
title her new show as a campaign announcement,
she commented on how it differed from her widely
known Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of
Hip Hop which she took on the road in 2001.
Since she “remembered thinking as a little girl,
what year [she] would be able to run for
president,” she realized 2004 would be the first
year she was eligible. In keeping the promise to
strive for the office to herself, she figured
she would still “run,” but in a very different
way; she decided to campaign, in an unbiased
way, not for herself, President Bush, or Senator
Kerry, she decided she would campaign for what
was right in today's society. In her recent hip
and dramatic interpretation, she used her skills
from her early days of slam poetry to speak
metaphorically about putting the “party” back in
Political Party, the United States' twisted love
affairs with the wrong “men,” the revolution as
a “night club,” and how the black community
should vote to improve our situations in this
country.
Amongst these issues, she spoke of paying
reparations to blacks for the 400 years of
forced servitude our ancestors endured. But, she
later refuted her statement, saying the black
community would only give the money back to the
sources of these reparations, by “blowing it on
designer clothes.” In response to the idea we
are “a smart country that makes bad decisions,”
Aya De Leon then commented on the negativity of
the United States and its effect on the black
people. Since neither of the actual Presidential
Candidates are the best, she believes, one of
these potentials could “set us back over 100
years” because of the things he stands for and
his views on minority population. She urged her
audience to “vote for the flake, not the snake.”
Aside from the “politics” of the election, she
dealt a dose of medicine to the sick black
nation and the ideas we have become so
accustomed to. Speaking on the derailing of
music sensation R. Kelly, she modeled him as an
example of “another lost black” male and asked
the crowd of many races and ethnicities she
spoke to in the Multi-purpose room to “get him
help” as he looks for the innocence his own
father took from him “between the legs of
someone else's prom-date.” Explicitly candid,
she elaborated on each of the issues facing the
black population, from “fifth generation abuse”
to weight issues to Afro Americans in high
government positions.
Though her presentation was thought-provoking
and intriguing, this Berkeley born 35 year-old
was a fine mixture of many of her favorite
artists; the humor of Whoopi Goldberg, who she
once studied under, as well as Arina Issacson
bled through as she delivered the words that
often go unsaid by many other black activists.
But, she was eager to admit she does not have a
“personal agenda,” because the work she does “is
not about [her].” She says this type of talent
comes from “work with Aya” because it takes a
strong person to put her feelings aside when
delivering important issues. In speaking life,
she educated each of her audience members on
something far deeper than the political
elections, but educated those who listened on
the importance of seeing the black community as
it is, and working to change it.
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