While we know that “his election may be fraught with such tension, hope, ambivalence or disillusionment for Black people in America,” since when has tension, hope, ambivalence or disillusionment been reasons not to vote. And especially why should they be particularly reasons why black people should not vote. How does that raise anybody up? Simply because voting and our current system isn’t working is no reason why we shouldn’t do vote, yes, and then throw our selves into those efforts that are, in fact, effective. The agony ought not to be directed at voting but how best we can address those responsibilities we have to our local, national, and international communities to improve them.

You said it best yourself. While we may be “skeptical that freedom can ever be found in a ballot box, but knowing full well that budgets, laws, and public policy can shrivel or spread misery.” If we are talking about eyes on the prize lets not get hung up on voting and focus on the fact that “budgets, laws, and public policy can shrivel or spread misery.”

And to address the previous poster: “I don’t feel like my vote counts, and I know they don’t have to count it if they don’t want to, so it seems an exercise in futility.” It doesn’t matter what you feel. Unless there is evidence that your vote doesn’t count (which may admittedly be hidden) there is no basis for that lament.

Never was there more truth in a simple statement. HOw can you effect change when everything stays the same? I too have been totally disillusioned about the political/electoral process that is supposed to somehow be our salvation. I view the entire election cycle with a ball of hopelessness in the pit of my stomach, becasue I know that there is no chance to carve sanity from an inherently insane system. Yet the best and brightest of us seem totally married to the concept of voting as our vehicle to empowerment, despite decades of evidence to the contrary.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to drag myself to the polls to participate in this season’s fiasco. I don’t feel like my vote counts, and I know they don’t have to count it if they don’t want to, so it seems an exercise in futility. I’m not the type to take part in such foolishness. I have endoresed Barak, and for similar reasons as yourself, and I already fear for his life, especially after this “win” in the Iowa Caucus will make Barak seem even more viable a candidate. I can just see the crazies out there oiling up their sniper rifles and polishing up those long range scopes.

Like Sam Cooke said, a change is gonna come. I hold out hope that it will be a change for the better.