From Here to November: Moving on, Moving Forward

This entire electoral primary season I have been stuck in a quagmire – torn not just between political candidates but between my two identities as an African-American woman while being mindful of the position each candidate has had on issues affecting my LGBT community.
I am a woman who still, in 2008, earns only 76 percent of the income of my male counterpart. I am a woman, head of my families swelling the ranks of Americans with below poverty level income.
I am a woman still engaged in the struggle for reproductive rights, battling to preserve Roe vs. Wade while my daughters and sisters around the world are denied education and access to birth control, abortion and family planning.
I am a woman watching in horror as more than 25 percent of new HIV/AIDS infections are my sisters – with women of color being especially impacted by the disease. I am a woman, mother of communities watching our children become victims of inadequate education, poor health care, violence and poverty.
I am a woman who looked for a candidate who felt as I felt, understood my concerns. I looked for a candidate who would transform the world's perception of leadership and be a true inspiration for women and girls for generations to come. That woman – competent, qualified, and able – is Hilary.
But I am also an African-American who can not help but be proud of having someone from my race step up to the challenge of transforming America. I am validated in my belief that African-Americans are the true product of this melting pot; a merging of cultures, ethnicities and races – the promise of America not a harsh reminder of slavery, rape, racism, or even self-loathing of the past. The best of America's best.
I am an African-American, still remembering the stories of Jim Crow and segregation told by my elders, watching in pride with my 90-year-old aunt as a black man speaks to all Americans about a new politics building upon shared understandings to pull us all together as a nation.
I am an African-American who believes in the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. and, with pride, I see King's hopes and dreams rekindled in the candidacy of Barack Obama.
Decisions, decisions – to separate the personal from the political, to listen, not just from the heart, but in the spirit of the nation's founders who declared, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Words even more true today than in 1776 as we recover from years of divisiveness, bigotry and hatred ushered in by the radical right, putting a stranglehold on our rights – women, children, poor, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight – leaving the nation, the world and the planet in crisis.
Decisions, decisions – requiring the wisdom of Solomon. Today, two candidates – not two mothers – come before the court of the people with a baby of hope and leadership both candidates claim as their own. Solomon threatened to split the baby in half just as this long primary season has threatened to split those of us wanting to vote for change in politics as usual.
It appears a decision has been made, delegates counted and gears shifted from primaries to November. It was along hard primary season, filled with passion, rhetoric both positive and negative – and often divisive.
As hard a journey as it has been to reach this point, as great as the struggle has been for the nomination, so much good has comes from the process. Record numbers have participated in the primaries. Refusing to accept money from lobbyists, Obama has broken fundraising records from everyday people embracing his message of hope and change. Women and girls have been inspired and empowered by Clinton's attack on the greatest of all patriarchal glass ceiling – the White House. New voters have registered and voted for the first time.
Now we, the supporters of both candidates, full of passion and commitment, must make a choice. As in Solomon's court, the issue is not the quality of the candidate; both are outstanding, qualified, historic and represent hope and change for our future. Our concern must be for the baby – our baby: the promise of real dialogue and solutions; of equality, education, health care, marriage equality, globalization and peace – politically and environmentally – on mother earth.
The primaries are over, but our work lies before us. With the wisdom of Solomon, let us come together, entrust our trusts, passion, commitment and energy in the candidate that will carry our child of hope, our child of change, our child of equality to victory this November.
We can't afford delays, in-fighting, or indecision. Let's move on and move forward in equality and pride.