Vote For Reagan!

Since this is the "Election Issue,” I wanted to do more than take pretty pictures. Like many, I'm extremely excited about this race. Senator Barack Obama is the American Dream; yet, two years ago, most of us had no idea who this cat was. Now he's going to be our next president—yeah, I said it!

This presidential race has me thinking about the generational gap that exists between old and young. There are Jesse Jackson's remarks; Bob Johnson; and Rev. Wright's apparent attempt to sabotage Barack's campaign. What angers us young people is the blatant refusal by some older blacks to acknowledge that we're going through our own struggle. No, we've never seen WHITES ONLY signs, or a black man lynched, or gone to a segregated school. But we have seen young, unarmed black men murdered time and time again by the police. And our schools are just as underfunded and segregated as they were 60 years ago.

It seems as if some black politicians don't really acknowledge us unless there's a camera around. We can shut the country down and march for the Jena Six, even get Don Imus fired, yet we can't do anything about the staggering numbers of black men in prison, our outrageously underfunded schools, the HIV epidemic among black women or the number of absent fathers? It's not their job to actually fix our community's problems—only to defend us when someone of another race wrongs us.

Barack's not the typical politician, and that's the beauty of it. Like a lot of us, he came from a single-parent home and even loved that stinky green. We love and appreciate all you've done, older politicians. But it's a new day. Barack Obama represents change, not just for the country but also for young people. A new civil-rights movement is on the rise—no marching, but empowering and educating us young people so that we can add our own chapter to our already long and amazing history. — Reagan Gomez