Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, focusing on the principle of Umoja (unity) – meaning to strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race. We hope that you’re planning to support some of the scheduled activities throughout the city this week.

As we bring 2012 to a close and look forward to the upcoming year, we realize that African Americans have the ability to come together when necessary, in times of need, yet will need to find ways to combine our efforts in the future. Basically, unity is critical to our survival.

Think about it… We put on our hoods and marched for justice in the Trayvon Martin case, then car-pooled to the polls and stood in hours-long lines to re-elect President Barack Obama. When Black folk put their minds together, powerful things happen.

But, we need much more unity in our community on a much more constant basis.

They say the ruins of a nation begin in the homes of its people. 

Considering what’s going on in some of the houses within our neighborhoods across the country, the children suffering from neglect and abuse among adults trying to cope with drug addictions and mental illness, or the struggles of good, hard-working people just trying to keep a roof over their family’s head and food on the table, we believe it's time we get back to knowing our neighbors, looking out for one another, and just lending a helping hand.  

It’s definitely time for us to support existing Black-owned businesses and institutions, as it’s imperative for us to build solid foundations for our children to stand upon.

If we fail to do so, too many of our people will forever become relegated to second-class citizenry. This is not what our ancestors fought and died for. This is not the stock from which we descend.

It’s high time we move toward collective responsibility and cooperative economics to strengthen us as a nation, but we can’t even begin to implement any of the other principles until we first unify.

In the wake of the horror we will forever associate with Sandy Hook Elementary, it is becoming evident that a call for “more gun control” is being met with a call for “more guns.” This counter-calling is suggesting that teachers be armed in the classroom.

While our second amendment right to bear arms served us well during a post-revolutionary war era, it is a dangerous leap in ideology to assume that arming teachers would result in a safer school environment.  To the contrary, this ridiculous dystopian reaction would probably endanger our children more than it would protect them. 

Should we now ask underpaid, overworked and unappreciated educators to also become an armed militia? Should the sweet little kindergarten arts and crafts teacher be expected to paste silver glitter on blue paper “and” fire a gun? Some of these teachers would be hard pressed to leave lesson plan instructions for the substitute teacher, much less how to unlock the Glock and pistol grip pump stashed in the teacher’s lounge.

The music teacher needs a teaching certificate and time logged in at the gun range? We no longer allow teachers to use a paddle, but now we are suggesting that they can pack heat and bust shots at their discretion? As of late, there are questions as to whether some police officers should be allowed to have guns, but now we are talking about giving them to teachers.

How many deaths, homicides, suicides and accidental shootings have occurred in homes where guns are kept? Why would we think that these same scenarios won’t happen in schools where guns are kept? In addition to us now worrying about deranged and unstable individuals bringing guns on school property, we may now need to deal with guns already being on school property. Some of these schools can’t even secure the AV equipment; so now our institutions of learning are going to be responsible for securing firearms and ammunition? Or will the custodian have the keys to that lock box?

This is a very slippery slope that such an endeavor would be embarking upon. We need to better think this through. Cooler heads should prevail. Evidence and research has proven that more guns mean more deaths. In an attempt to protect our children, let’s not place them in a situation that would put them at more risk of harm.

We in the Black community know, better than anyone else, the need for gun control. Day in and day out, we are dealing with deaths by guns be it among violent criminals, within domestic relations, and even from trigger-happy police officers.

We’ve buried and is still burying far too many of our own as a result of gun violence. As of Dec. 9, Chicago has logged 478 gun related deaths this year. Our neighboring city of Akron, with a population of less than 200,000 has even seen 24. 

Many of these victims are either poor, black, or both.  

Guns are, have been, out of control for a long time as it’s easier to buy an assault rifle than a pistol while many can be purchased at local gun shows with no background at all. And, that’s not including the guns bought in back allies on the Black market. Then, on top of that, The National Rifle Association (NRA) remains one of the biggest lobbyists in Washington.

And, we’ve been begging, pleading for years for legislation to help get guns off the streets.

But now, with the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newton, Connecticut – a predominately white community where the medium salary is $100,000 – leaving 26 dead including the perpetrator, some seemingly sincere discussion about gun control immediately resurfaced after a near decade long hiatus.  

Finally! That’s great! But what’s sadder than this particular tragedy is it took this senseless lost of life to spark dialogue on a national level – almost as if the lives of the young Black men who has went to an early grave, the victimized students in school shootings, the innocent people who patronized malls and movie theatres when some lunatic opens fire never really mattered.

Please… don’t get us wrong. This is far from a race issue, not trying to make it such. Losing the lives of 18 very young, innocent children is enough to pull the heart strings of anyone with an ounce of concern. This is the second worst school shooting in U.S. History. All we are saying is it should’ve never had to come to this.

The GOP – John McCain and Lindsey Graham in particular – are sadly mistaken if they think this is the end of Susan Rice.

The mistake they made while launching an attack on the “theoretical” appointment of U.S. Ambassador Rice to the position Secretary of State, replacing Hillary Clinton, was to challenge her intelligence. Maybe McCain forgot he was the same guy who used his intellect to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Maybe in his rush to “swift boat” this sister, he didn’t get the memo to check her stats.

Susan Rice is a Stanford Phi Beta Kappa, Truman Scholar, Rhodes Scholar, and Ph.D from Oxford – not to mention the class valedictorian and starting point guard at Washington D.C.’s elite National Cathedral School. Rice isn’t just some Ivy League Obama ideologue that the president was hoping could help his hoop squad.

In meeting rooms all over district, she is known to be highly assertive, strong-willed and brutally honest. Before serving in the Obama Administration, she also served under President Clinton on the National Security Council and as an Assistant Secretary of State. The truth of the matter is that Rice is a diplomat of the highest order and was more than qualified for the position she was rumored to be in line for.

But, if they think Rice is just going to go home as a result, join a quilting bee and watch the Guiding Light all day. They really never knew her in the first place.

In the role of the “good soldier,” Rice wrote to the President asking that her name be excluded from process to seeking a Secretary of State, “the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive, and costly – to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities. That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country.”

At best, the GOP attack on Rice was a red herring, a straw man, and sour grapes. At worst, it was racism, sexism and intellectualism. Mark this down as another thing the Republican Party will have to answer for in the near future.

Either way, they will be seeing this gifted Black woman again. Yes, she withdrew her name from consideration for her dream job “this time around” but, if her detractors are popping champagne bottles to her defeat for a nomination that she had not been nominated for in the first place, their celebration may be short lived.

Somebody like Susan Rice didn’t get to where she’s at by being weak.

While still serving admirably in her role as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, don’t be surprised to see her in the role of National Security Advisor (a position that doesn’t need Senate approval). We may even see her in 2016 at the highest levels of the presidential administration of a Hillary Clinton, Deval Patrick, or somebody with the last name of Kennedy. But either way, they will be seeing Susan Rice again.