Skains leaving Tarpons for Cecilia
April 5, 2016
Annette Charpentier
April 7, 2016
The presidency of Barack Obama has about nine months left, and of course nobody knows at this point who the new chief executive shall be.
We also don’t know who the new ninth justice of the U.S. Supreme Court will be, since Antonin Scalia died and the Senate Republicans so far are blocking the potential that a replacement will be considered. They want to wait until after a new president takes office.
These people in the Senate have control issues that border on the pathological. They say that a Supreme Court appointment should wait until after “the people have spoken.”
The people spoke in 2008, and again in 2012, and their choice is still in the White House, so it would appear the speaking has already been done. It is amazing how these people somehow regard the Obama presidency, which was a product of the peoples’ votes, as illegitimate.
They were perfectly at ease with the election of George W. Bush, whose last term was decided not by the people but the U.S. Supreme Court. They are thus content during this presidency to wage a coup by obstruction. The disingenuous nature of this behavior generally goes unnoticed in these parts, where an uncomfortable number of people casually cling to birther philosophies.
I remember being in Grand Isle, at the height of the crisis created by the BP oil spill in 2010, to cover a presidential visit. “You know, he’s a MOOZ-lam,” were the words that I heard from more than one person in Grand Isle that day. Which, for the record, he is not.
What those who want to stack the Supreme Court fail to see is that if indeed the White House remains in Democratic hands, the likelihood that a justice even farther to the left than any proposed by President Obama could more easily be proposed.
But all of this is mere speculation. For now, the President of the United States is indeed Barack Obama, and there are some people who have no trouble recognizing this, indeed reveling in it, and in that sense accomplishing what many others in local government have been unable to do, which is make sure that this president recognizes the unique nature of our region, and therefore its unique needs.
Arlanda Williams, who represents District 2 on the Terrebonne Parish Council, has accomplished perhaps more than anyone else locally to make sure that the POTUS sees us as more than a spot on a map of the country, or to see our home as a place that not only did not elect him but likely never would.
“I have been blessed,” Arlanda said during a recent conversation. “I have had an open door to this White House administration.” She has been a member of several high level conferences at the White House, not with just aides and stand-ins, but with the President himself.
“At a conference on Minority Inclusion and Contractor Diversion, at another on coastal issues, and altogether maybe at five White House luncheons and meetings, to a point where at one conference the President specifically asked ‘where is Arlanda Williams?’ whom he had nicknamed at one meeting ‘Gulf Coast.’”
The relationship has resulted also in at least two kids from Terrebonne Parish ending up at the Easter Egg Hunt at the White House every year.
Arlanda has seen as well senior citizens, who at one time were denied as adults full participation in the vote, getting to meet a president truly elected by all of the people, and that has brought tears to her eyes. All this helping to mold policy and sharing the connection in the White House for the good of the entire community, while also helping make magic moments for some local folks, is for Arlanda an experience beyond fulfilling.
The last time she saw the President was in Baton Rogue, this woman who was once a little girl playing atop tombstones in a cemetery on Wallis Street. And the message she brings from all of this is a very simple one that she readily shares. It has a value that goes beyond who may be sitting in the White House or in the Parish Council’s center chair.
“You see that it is no longer about yourself, but about the shoulders of others from the past that you can stand on, the ability to say ‘yes you can,’” she explains, with the hope of being one of those pairs of shoulders for local youngsters as they grow. “It is knowing that you can’t let your situation stop your destination.’” •
