ADVOCACY
Tired of folks speeding down your street? Need
July 4, we are still fighting to be full Americans.
government to install speed bumps.
Or as Brother King often implored, forcing the United States to be the nation is says it is on
Don’t want lead paint impacting your kids as
paper.
they play on the playground? Government regulates the contents of the paint in those
We are faced with a monumental and daunting
products.
challenge: do we stay on the present course or do we redouble our efforts to advance
I could go on and on and on, but our nation
ourselves politically and economically?
is literally run by government in one form of another.
It was Alpha Brother Maynard Jackson, the first Black mayor of Atlanta, who was taught
That’s why we cannot afford to check out of
the three B’s by his grandfather: the book, the
this process.
ballot and the buck.
After two presidential cycles where Obama’s
The advancement of our people will be
name was on the ballot, Black folks turned out
contingent on how vigorous we are in
in record numbers. Our vote total had risen
addressing the three B’s over the next 25 years,
each year since the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
and the level of excellence we demand of
but we showed our power. Obama won North
ourselves and our family and friends. This is no
Carolina by 14,000 votes in 2008, and that was
time for us to be complacent. This is no time to
due to massive turnout of Black folks in places
be satisfied with our condition. This is no time
like High Point. Yet in 2016, disenchantment
to even say, “Let’s someone else do the fighting;
with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump led
I’m tired.”
Black voting participation to dip, especially amount voters 18-29 years old. This is not to
As long as there is breath in your body, you
say that had Black folks voted the same way we
are obligated to the ancestors and to your
did in 2008 and 2012 that Trump wouldn’t be
children’s children to keep plowing ahead and
president, but we sure didn’t need to test it!
to fight. And as Jewel Vertner Woodson Tandy implored the Alpha brotherhood to become
In many states we still see too many
more engaged in issues facing Negroes in 1937,
unregistered African Americans. Yes, it’s true
“We must fight till hell freezes over, and then
that the GOP is pushing voter ID and other
fight on the ice!” S
forms of voter suppression to frustrate us. But let me be real clear: poll taxes and scandalous requirements such as reciting the state constitution in order to vote, common practice in the South in the 50s and 60s, was far more difficult impediments to voting than what we see today. Ours is a history of having to fight for what we deserved. Our freedom ain’t free. While white Americans celebrate Independence Day on 38
Brother Roland S. Martin is a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha, initiated into the Pi Omicron chapter at Texas A&M in Spring 1989. He is the senior analyst on the Tom Joyner Morning Show; and is the host/managing of #RolandMartinUnfiltered, a daily digital show that streams on Facebook, Youtube and Periscope. For more information, please visit RolandMartinUnfiltered.com.
THE SPHINX