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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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(11/4/00 Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper)
by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
We are at a crossroads in America. Our choices on November 7 will determine the nation's course for at least the next decade.
The Republican fork in this crossroads would lead to a tragic setback for Americans - especially for Americans of color. If the country were to take that course, we would face a future in which the Presidency, the Congress and the Supreme Court are controlled by conservatives who are indifferent, if not actively hostile, to our interests.
That fearsome prospect should be sufficient cause to generate the largest African American voter turnout in our history. History tells us, though, that we need a positive vision to motivate us - not simply a disaster to avoid.
The positive vision is our continued march toward the future that Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Congressional Democrats have been building for the last eight years, despite stubborn Republican opposition.
Al Gore's vision for America is a nation fully committed to investing in all of our people - an America in which everyone has a place at the table.
Let me offer an example.
I have known the Vice-President for many years, but I came to fully realize the depth of his commitment to social justice back in June of 1997. Republican budget cutters were threatening to devastate Baltimore's Healthy Start program - our community-based initiative to reduce infant mortality and assure healthy new-born children in several of our poorest neighborhoods.
At considerable risk to his own future goals, Al Gore backed my effort to restore most of Baltimore's Healthy Start funding. He did so, he told me, because it was the right thing to do.
Al Gore has shown us, again and again, that he is a leader of integrity and great ability.
We must not be lulled into indifference by the political spin doctors and sound bites. In America, elections are about us - about the quality of our lives and who we can become as a people.
In Baltimore, we don't need television or radio commercials to inform our decision on election day. If we listen to the voices of our Healthy Start mothers and their wonderful little children, we will know what we must do on November 7.
We need only listen to the voices of our community - calling to us each week from the pages of the AFRO - to know why we must cast the deciding votes in this election.
We should listen to the children at Union Baptist and our other Head Start classrooms who are receiving more funding today because of Al Gore's leadership. That same commitment to our future offers the students and teachers at West Baltimore Middle School the smaller classes, current text books and computers they so desperately need.
Al Gore will provide the leadership we need to pass and fund a Medicare-based prescription drug benefit so that Ella White Campbell's mother will never again be denied the medicine she needs; and with Al Gore as our President, we will finally enact into law a true Patients' Bill of Rights.
We must remember Charles and Etta Carter, tormented and humiliated on their 40th wedding anniversary by a racially-profiled traffic stop. Al Gore will end, once and for all, the "crime" of "driving while black."
As President, he will choose Supreme Court Justices with the social vision of Thurgood Marshall - not conservative throwbacks for whom States' rights will always dominate human rights.
If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were alive today, Congressman John Lewis has observed, "...he would be in the forefront of reminding the government that its first concern should be the basic needs of its citizens - not just black Americans but all Americans - for food, shelter, health care, education, jobs, livable incomes and the opportunity to realize their full potential as individual people."
Vice-President Gore understands the fundamental importance of that democratic principle. He is well-prepared to work for that better America.
On November 7, when we elect Al Gore to be our next President, we will be voting for ourselves.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.
