22
November 2012
The choice is yours. Vote for who helps your family by Jamie Campbell By the time you read this, we will be on the verge of selecting a new “leader of the free world.” Many of you will ask yourself, “are you better now than four years ago?” Instead, I ask that you consider if your family will be better off in four years. Will you be able to consider owning a home or sending your children to college any easier? Will those rights that you believe in be strengthened or minimized to the point of non-existence? As your family ages, do you have enough in savings to take care of them without any assistance? I believe these are the questions that
we need to be asking ourselves. Not the surface questions that seem to be the most important to us. You see, I don’t care what a person’s faith is as along he or she is working on projects and goals that are going to make things better for me and mine. When I say me and mine, I mean my community. I say it this way because I have learned when one person is not well in the community, it may not be long
before I am in the same exact situation. I don’t care if my “leader” is a nice guy. I want a competent, emotional and logical person in charge. A leader has to make tough choices, not warm and fuzzies. This is not Four Square, this is real life and you and I both know that real choices are not always fun choices. I want my leader to be able to lead with head and heart. This way, he or she can ignore what folks are saying and printing and act with the best interest of everyone involved. I want my leader to not make friendship choices, but choices that are going to help those outside of that friends list. If head and heart conflict, I want my leader to be able to step back and just simply look at the facts to make decisions. I want to be governed by someone who can be strong enough to admit they made a mistake, change direction and move forward. I do not want false emotion. If my leader does not like a particular group of people, they should say it. Nine times out of ten, the people already have figured out your true position. True emotion and conviction will usually get your opponents to respect you. The false emotion only brings more scorn. For the sake of full disclosure, I share an opinion similar to that of my peers, contrary to what certain media and statisticians would have the great majority believe. I do not need my leader to look like me. In my life I have learned, and continue to learn, that those who look like you will hurt twice as badly as those who do not. To put a historical spin on this, in the
1960’s MLK stated strongly and eloquently, “the Negro must make it inexplicably clear he is not tied to one political party.” While I missed hearing that quote in real time, my elders did not. They taught me to vote my conscience. They told me to vote because too many people gave up far too much for me to sit back and complain when one vote could affect change. I implore you look beyond rhetoric and completions. Whether store-bought or natural hue, what is the individual doing? Is he or she going to be able to stand up in the midst of a crisis and lead correctly? I have seen those who look like me with power make the worst decisions that affect my community for their own personal gain. Hence, a leader looking like me only counts when I am the one leading the charge. At the end of the day, I care that you vote. I do not care who you vote for. That is your call. All I hope is that your conscience, and not a sound bite, is your guide on Election Day. Go online to votespa.com for more information on polling locations and what to bring on Election Day, Nov. 6.