“The Vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by Man for breaking down Injustice and destroying the terrible walls which Imprison men because they are different from other Men.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
"The Ballot Or The Bullet"
Malcolm X
“Bad Politicians are sent to Washington by Good People who don't Vote.”
William Simon
I'M NOT GOING BACK!
"Ain't Going To Let Nobody Turn Me Around"
FORWARD! TOGETHER! MARCH!!
It just isn't Natural for a BLACK American Citizen NOT to Support our Nation's First BLACK Legally Elected President.
It's just NOT Natural!
Despite Differences of Opinions on certain Issues, BLACK Voters should STILL Support Barack Obama's re-election.
Why?
Let's Consider the Alternative: Mitt Romney.
If BLACK Voters Stay home in November or Cast their Ballots for Mitt Romney, the BLACK Race in America WILL most likely be in Worse Shape than ever because Romney has made it No Secret that he plans to send us BACK to SLAVERY
via Extremely Low Wage Jobs,
NO Unions,
NO Fair Hiring Practices & via Right-to-Work laws,
NO Benefits,
NO Health Care,
NO help for Minority-Owned Small Businesses,
NO Regulation for Wall Street & Large Corporations,
NO Affirmative Action,
NO Equal Justice,
NO Voting Rights,
A Stronger Klu Klux Klan Presence,
Fewer BLACK Homeowners,
NO Public School Education,
NO Federal Postal Service,
NO TSA,
More BLACK Soldiers Ordered To The Front Lines in Combat Zones,
More BLACK Men In Prisons,
More BLACK Men in Privatized Prisons,
More Segregation,
NO Civil Rights.
If Mitt Romney is Elected the Heated Racial Divide in America will most likely Widen.
In essence the American BLACK Community will cease to Exist if Mitt Romney is Elected.
How do I know this to be true?
Because Mitt Romney has NOT reached out to BLACK Voters at all and I don't think he intends to do so. EVER!!
We Can't Go Back!
WE ARE NOT GOING BACK!
"Ain't Going To Let Nobody Turn Me Around"
FORWARD!!
HELP RE-ELECT BARACK OBAMA IN 2012!
GET YOUR STATE-APPROVED ID CARDS NOW AND GO TO THE POLLS THIS NOVEMBER EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO CRAWL THERE!
REAL TALK!!!
Battleground 2012: Will black voters put Obama over the top again in North Carolina?
“Swing state” is something North Carolinians have been hearing a lot lately. There’s no avoiding the importance the campaigns of both President Obama and his presumptive challenger Mitt Romney place on the state and its 15 electoral votes. As tightening polls and numerous candidate visits suggest, predicting the November result is not easy.
But for the president to repeat his surprising 2008 win here – by a slim, just over 14,000-vote margin – he will have to target, expand on and get out his strongest base. That would be minority, particularly African American, voters.
What will it take for the president to make North Carolina swing his way in November? Will the Democrats’ decision to hold their national convention in Charlotte, the state’s largest city, affect enthusiasm and turnout? How much does the president’s 2012 success depend on the rise of North Carolina’s minority population? And will the economy trump everything?
“A lot of politics is demographics these days, more than ever,” said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
Bositis, who studies minority political engagement, pointed to a change that is happening in North Carolina and across the country. He told me that the white working class, a group Obama has had trouble appealing to, “is really shrinking in the country,” while the number of non-white voters is growing.
According to census figures, between 2000 and 2010 the Hispanic population in North Carolina more than doubled (to slightly more than 800,000) and the black population rose almost 20 percent (to two million) out of a total of more than nine and a half million residents. Some are African Americans moving or returning to the South, for economic and cultural reasons, in what has been called a “reverse migration.”
In a record 2008 turnout, African-Americans made up 23 percent of voters here, with 95 percent favoring Obama. In exit polls, an astounding 100 percent of black women in North Carolina reported voting for the president. Obama won just 35 percent of the white vote, but he also did well overall among young and college-educated voters of all races here.
Of the voters who helped the president become the first Democrat to win the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976, “The only way those numbers will improve will be based upon population change,” said Bositis. “It’s going to depend upon the degree to which the Obama campaign decides to put resources into North Carolina,” he said.
He added, “If he does do that, if he does have a very good ground game … they will go out of their way to register as many young people, black people and Hispanic people as they can.”
“The question is ‘how energized is each candidate’s base?’” said LaTonya M. Williams, assistant professor at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte.
Will race matter? While Bositis said, “In Southern states, you would be foolhardy to assume that race doesn’t play any role,” he added that it matters less in a business-oriented, diverse state such as North Carolina. “Obama’s not going to bring up race; his campaign has to focus on the economy. It would be a distraction, and not a welcome distraction.”
The appeal to African-Americans may be subtle, but it’s there. The Obama campaign has opened 16 offices throughout the state, with more expected, and has organized phone banks and voter registration efforts – with a parade of celebrities offering encouragement. At a Charlotte event this year, volunteers were pumped up by Keshia Knight Pulliam, all grown up from The Cosby Show, and former Obama personal aide Reggie Love, who with his Duke basketball background brings his own state ties. Actress Angela Bassett spoke at a North Carolina Women for Obama event in Fayetteville earlier this month.
Going to the source of political and other kinds of conversation was the thinking behind the state campaign’s B&B (that’s barber shop and beauty parlor) program, where patrons can pick up voter registration forms along with a haircut.
“It’s a cornerstone of every community,” said Don Johnson, who hosted an event at his Nu-U Barbershop and Hair Salon in Charlotte on a recent Saturday. “People go there; if they’re not getting services, they take their kids there.” He told me that “when you’re in barber college, they tell you there are three things you don’t talk about – religion, personal stuff and politics. But politics is a major part of the conversation.”
He added, “We’ve been supporting Obama for a while. He’s done a good job for veterans, in health care and looking out for the small businessman, which is good for me. There’s more urgency for the second campaign than the first one.”
The president and first lady have made several stops in North Carolina, with Michelle Obama bringing a “Let’s Move!” event to Charlotte in March, during the 100th anniversary of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA). In May, she gave the commencement address for North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro.
In September, the Obamas will return for the Democratic convention in Charlotte, where the city’s second African American mayor, Anthony Foxx, will host, with advisory assistance from Harvey B. Gantt, architect, community leader and, in the 1980s, the city’s first African American mayor.
“The convention will give them a boost in terms of publicity, assuming everything goes well,” said Bositis. In 2008, Obama built up big early-voting leads in Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County that countered North Carolina election-day results, which he actually lost.
Obama’s support of same-sex marriage, thought by some to cause a rift between the president and conservative black voters, has so far not seemed to affect support for him.
With the support of black voters, a May amendment to the North Carolina constitution defining marriage between one man and one woman as the only domestic legal union passed overwhelmingly. Yet, as Dwayne A. Walker, pastor at Charlotte’s Little Rock AME Zion Church, told me, though he believes “God intends for men to marry women and women to marry men,” he was against the amendment, which he felt had “unintended consequences,” and he is for Obama.
“I’m an avid Democrat, and will be supporting him again,” Walker said.
When it comes to Obama’s chances of 2012 success, what matters most may not be the number of new voters his campaign can sign up or the amount of enthusiasm a September speech in Bank of America stadium can generate, but the unemployment rate. Right now, in North Carolina, it stands at 9.4 percent, above the national 8.2 percent.
“It’s going to be tough,” said Bositis.
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Sources: AP, MSNBC, The Grio, Youtube, Google Maps
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