Official Participant in the Youth Media Blog-a-Thon.

This has nothing to do with the topic at hand but I thought Obama’s speech this week was really good. So, good in fact that it wasn’t later till I realized what I wasn’t hearing. I wasn’t hearing him talk about the really big issues like violence in our communities, how we were going go about making college tuition less expensive – or health care for that matter.

Granted, the speech wasn’t supposed to be about any of those things – but who is to say it shouldn’t have been.

If Obama spoke as passionately about the issue of education, violence, and health as he did about the issue of race– it would have been the best speech ever, at least in the top ten.

Since day one every candidates has spoken with giant air balloons coming out of their mouth. This was the first time, in a long time that a campaign didn’t just sound like hollowed out words. But again, I wish the words transformed into other pressing issues.

Like Donny said in the last post, we are living next door to violence, and it doesn’t seem to be moving out anytime soon.

American wants to know that our next leader is going to stand for something other than situations beyond our borders. We are knee deep; we are up to our ears in a society that is plagued with an issue that is killing people every day. I may not have been touched personally by violence but that doesn’t mean I don’t know it exists, and that I don’t fear it. You can’t close your eyes and hope it goes away like the boogey monster under your bed. Community violence, global violence – it all runs on the same track. It is just really up to us to do something about it.
—Eming Piansay