VOTE!

I think we’re missing the point.

• Police killings.
• Black on Black crime.
• Declining educational standards.
• Dilapidated neighborhoods.

We march, we pray, we protest. We speak out each week when a new weed of concern invades our garden of existence. We input our emotions on social media (#this, #that), with opinions that support a need for change and more importantly a desire to seek such change. We’ve had protests in Ferguson that led to demonstrations in all major cities. We wear our t-shirts ‘Black Lives Matter’ as if we need to advertise that they do. Of course they do. In 1967, police officers murdered over 160 Black citizens. In 2015, that number will end up about the same.

Yet we still march/Yet we still die…

We die with each felonious (erroneous) conviction. Twice when it’s one of us killing one of us. We die when we don’t participate in our school system’s structure. School’s not a daycare! We die when we see littering taking place in our environment whether by us or to us.

We’re killing ourselves by not voting.

How do you think police chiefs and departments are governed? Or disbanded and created anew? How do you think school systems’ funds are allocated? And who should really police the police and be held accountable for our own neighborhoods?

The Vote.

SNCC, SCLC and CORE knew this. They marched by day but registered voters by night. Door to door to ensure that their voices would be heard. They died for that right and got it. Planting the seed, the backbone, of the Civil Rights Movement. And that power has now dissipated, resulting in corrupt police forces, unequal education for our children, embarrassing living conditions and a total lack of respect for one another.

Vote.

Vote at your district level, for your community organizer, for your council person, your PTA president, for your county seats, etc. Shoot, every time there’s an election, pay attention, are your needs being met? Is their vision conducive to exonerating the plight of you and your neighbors?

We still have the power, we just have to use it.