IF I DON"T HAVE A VOTE I DON"T HAVE A VOICE

Please take a couple of minutes and watch this video from McComb Mississippi where they have a direct connection to the past that runs pure and deep. The next time you talk to your friends and coworkers tell them that this is what it is all about the struggle to vote and the precious blood that has been shed for it. In this election year where the clouds of deception, miss direction and illusion have taken center stage one thing must be clear.

This is an election about change real change and it is linked through the years to all those who have sacrificed and never seen their dreams unfold. But like a flower pollinated on the wind, their dreams live on. Like Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner plucked in their tender years and left to rot in and earthen damn. Like Medgar Evers felled by an assassins bullet as he walked up his driveway. Like Dr. King turning back to tell us of the glorious view from the mountain top. Like Susan B. Anthony passing from this life into the next never having seen the fruits of her struggle but knowing that her righteous work would unleash the power of women in this country, her final public statement "Failure is impossible."

We will not be deterred this year, because we know what it has taken to achieve the many victories We know that the right wing would do away with with what we have fought so hard to get with a wrinkle of their noses like the character Samantha in "Bewitched" if they could. We know that we have shaped this world inch by inch against impossible odds. We are the ones who have brought the benefits of Civil Rights, Voting Rights, the eight hour day, the weekend and social security. We are the ones who have made it possible to send our kids to schools, so that they could go on and create the space program and computer technology. We have sacrificed our children on the alter of this country, both on the battlefields of foriegn lands and here at home in the ghettos, in the barrios and in the hills of Appalachia. Many have passed before us famous and nameless in the struggles for human rights. We are the direct link - to those who created and expanded the American middle class. We will protect our gains and yes we will expand them. We represent inclusion we are the note and the harmonic.

We must raise up the heroic people who have been relegated to the mist of the past and present them to our young people tell them what the price of their freedom costs. What they are telling us in McComb is that voter suppression wears a new face, but that they have been building a movement that can defy the odds, bring hope to our country, and heal the divisions.

Like the masthead says, you must always ask your self.... Which side are you on? HOPE or FEAR, INCLUSION or EXCLUSION, PROSPERITY or ECONOMIC CHAOS, WAR or PEACE? Please take a moment and watch this video.