by Elinor Tatum
I must apologize to our readers for not writing an editorial last week, but quite frankly, I was a bit depressed.
As the news rolled in, I felt a bit of pessimism as I examined the political and economic landscape facing our community, and I did not want to start the year on the wrong note.
It had been a tough year, with a do-nothing Republican House of Representatives intent on minimizing any successes that the Obama administration may have had, and I was tired of hearing Mitt Romney and the rest of the band of idiots making either stupid remarks or what were clearly racist statements against our community.
I wondered if things would continue to get worse or if we would be in store for more of the same.
But that was last week.
This week, I am more optimistic that this will be a banner year for the Black community
This year, we will see many wins on the battlefield. We will make great strides in education, protect our voting rights, elect more Black officials and keep Barack Obama president of the United States
I see 2012 as a year for great momentum and great opportunity. We have so much to lose; therefore, we have so much to fight for.
2012 is the year we will reaffirm all of the work that was done during the Civil Rights Movement. We have seen the beginning of the next generation’s Civil Rights Movement, and it is in leaders like Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous and Marc Morial. They are clear of mind and motive and are working to lead the charge against those who want our liberties limited or strangled.
We are fighting across this country to make sure every vote gets counted. We are calling attention to the need to abolish the death penalty, which all too often snares the innocent, the poor and the Black. We are forging ahead to make sure that our families receive quality health care and that our children receive a quality education.
2012 is a make-or-break year, and we intend to make it.
WE MUST re-elect Obama-if we do not, everything that our parents and our grandparents worked for can be overturned. Our voices will be stifled and our futures will be more uncertain than they have been in decades.
We have an opportunity now, especially when public confidence in the Republican House of Representatives is so low, to turn around the ill-gotten gains made by the Republicans and their Tea Party allies two years ago.
We have the opportunity to give our president the tools he needs to continue to make great change in America. And by helping him, we are helping ourselves.
We owe it to ourselves and the president to work hard to get his agenda moving forward.
We owe it to our children to fight for the rights our parents fought for.
We owe it to ourselves to not sit idly by as our country is taken away from us.
We must fight.
Whether it is on the street corner or in the halls of government, we must have our voices heard.
We must join with our grassroots organizations in the community to help mobilize for the 2012 election.
We must support our civil rights organizations, like the NAACP, the National Urban League and the National Action Network.
We must make organizations that help uplift our people strong, including the Thurgood Marshall Fund and the United Negro College Fund, which support the higher education of our youth. And we must fight to make our communities economically and politically stronger.
So, as we complete our national yearly observation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let us pause and say thank you to those who came before us and fought so hard for our liberties.
Now we must motivate ourselves to keep up the good fight and keep moving forward. King’s dream lives on, but only as long as we keep fighting for it.
(Elinor Tatum is publisher and editor in chief of the New York Amsterdam News.)
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