Does The American Dream Exists

'I have almost 200 people reporting for me all over Nigeria'

He hit the nation’s consciousness, and headlines, with his fiery activism when he led the Students Union Government of the University of Lagos, Akoka, between 1992 and 1994. Since that baptism of fire, which peaked with the relentless national and global agitation for the revalidation of the June 12, 1993 presidential vote, won by the late Bashorun M. K. O Abiola, Omoyele Sowore never looked back. While most of his colleagues chose the glittering broad way of life, the Ondo State-born activist voted for the narrow way. He voted for a path strewn with thorns and boulders. He chose a Spartan life, a life of vigorous and sometimes aggressive action in pursuing happiness and wellness of the greatest number of the people.

For his efforts, he got arrested and detained in various jailhouses eight times. He almost died in Abacha’s gulag. But he never buckled. Rather, the torture and excruciating pains of incarceration toughened him so much they became like narcotics needed to spur him to higher and more demanding levels of activism. Finally, he left Nigeria for America, not for the much-vaunted American dream but to search for channels and opportunities that would further equip him in the struggle for a better Nigeria. In the process, he founded the popular social media network, Sahara Reporters, which has become the biggest and the most popular platform for citizens’ journalism for Nigerians wherever they may be on the globe. In its short span of existence, saharareporters.com has become what some people appropriately label the Wikileak of Africa.

I met Omoyele Sowore, 40, in New York, in the evening of September 5, 2010, where we both participated in a roundtable on the 2011 Nigerian general elections, alongside other speakers. After the event, organised by the Global Information Network, GIN, a non-profit organisation led by Ms. Lisa Vives, an American, Sowore, who moderated at the event, suggested we meet the next evening at a restaurant somewhere on Fulton Street, in Brooklyn, for a drink. That was where I sold the idea of an interview to him. He obliged.

GreeneThoughts: Does the American Dream Exist??

The belief in America as a land of opportunity may also explain why rising inequality in the United States has yielded so little in terms of responsiveness from policy makers: if the American Dream is alive and well, then there is little need for government intervention to smooth the rough edges of capitalism. Diligence and skill, the argument goes, will yield a fair distribution of rewards Americans have tended to be far more optimistic about their ability to control their own economic destinies through hard work, less likely to believe that coming from a wealthy family is important to getting ahead, less likely to think that differences in income within their country are too large, and less likely to favor the government’s taking responsibility to reduce those differences. Income inequality has been widening for nearly three decades in the United States. Amidst a flurry of new data and media reports, President George W. Bush addressed the issue for the first time in January 2007 during remarks to Wall Street: “The fact is that income inequality is real—it’s been rising for more than 25 years.” ... between 1979 and 2004, the real after-tax income of the poorest one-fifth of Americans rose by 9 percent, that of the richest one-fifth by 69 percent, and that of the top 1 percent by 176 percent. Data on relative mobility suggest that people in the United States have experienced less relative mobility than is commonly believed. Most studies find that, in America, about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income are passed on to the next generation.11 This means that one of the biggest predictors of an American child’s future economic success—the identity and characteristics of his or her parents—is predetermined and outside that child’s control. They've paid to delude people into thinking capital gains (money earned by one's investments rather than work) should be taxed at lower rates than regular income. And they've paid to have the laws contorted so that a hedge fund manager getting paid $100,000,000 per year can classify that income as capital gains and get taxed at 15% -- the same tax rate as a married couple making $68,000.

The twenty-something American dream, a cross-country quest for a generation

Beyond the American dream, lifelong learning and the search for meaning in a postmodern world

Art does (not!) exist

Restoring the American Dream, The Defining Voice in the Movement for Liberty

American dream, American nightmare, fiction since 1960