HOLDING OBAMA'S FEET TO THE FIRE

Within the next few years, we have an opportunity here in Decatur County to help solve one of the nation’s most troubling social ills – wide-spread unemployment of unskilled labor among minority populations.

Soon, we will an opportunity to address it here in Decatur County at an expanding level.

A great majority of our young minority students need all the incentives they can acquire to stay in school. And we can give them additional incentives to go the distance.

The current Bainbridge High School has a vocational program for its students, and when BHS moves into its new facility, the old BHS will house seventh and eighth grade middle school students. Let’s utilize the vocational facilities at the current BHS, to offer vocational classes to middle school students.

We may be able to help them earlier to get a head start on career building with vocational skills they can carry into their adult lives utilizing classes from middle school to high school and even into Bainbridge College.

We will continue to need skilled craftsmen at all levels -- people who can repair small engines and automobiles, air conditioners, refrigerators, TV sets. Where will the next generation of skilled carpenters, plumbers or masons come from, or health care assistants and nurses?

Teachers will tell you that the desire to learn among young minority students is seriously lacking. Many of them have little or no interest in academics.

Bored and uninspired, they become involved in juvenile crime, taking and distributing drugs, getting pregnant, being disruptive in class, generally not caring one twit about learning. Our prisons are full of young minority men, whole generations lost, young people without skills, without direction, who only know the way of the streets.

It’s terrorism of a different kind.

Should Sen. Barack Obama grasp the grand prize, he has an obligation to all these young people. If he does nothing else, his rise to the top should be an inspiration to minority students whose lives may be filled with emptiness of purpose. If elected President, his administration should champion the call to minority students that they can make a difference. He should let them know that this is the land of opportunity, and show them the way out of the projects, away from criminal activity, to become contributing and useful citizens.

If he becomes President Obama, then all of us should insist that this be his major social program, that he inspire these young people to stay in school and off the streets, that his administration provide necessary funds and programs available to local schools, that incentives are there for all students to participate in a new way of life.

Should the election go his way, all of us should hold his feet to the fire on this issue, insist that he moves these young people away from drugs and crime, that our communities and projects become free from fear.

Come this November, we could see one of the most dramatic political shifts to occur in decades. Already, Southern primaries have shown that minority voters are turning out bigtime. The South could return to its Democratic ways, and the country could see a significant Democratic majority in Congress.

If you are elected, Senator Obama, with an administration devoted to inspiring young minority people to take advantage of the land of opportunity, your proper place in history could be assured.

It could be your destiny.