$574,257,720.00

I've been waiting for the best moment to write this piece. The spirit of hope and the winds of change have surged through every corner of our country, and three words are now synonymous with the generation whose task it is to turn the page on substandard policy and haphazard management of domestic and foreign affairs: Yes We Can. The new catch phrase that has taken America by storm. Not since Chubby Checker's "The Twist" has anything been so contagious, yet we must realize that there is a very important question that must be answered in the coming months: How Do We?

How do we proceed to institute the change that is so desperately needed to eliminate the enormous gaps that exist in socioeconomic classes, education, incarceration, and other forms of political persecution that basically dictate who succeeds and who fails? How do we go from a mantra to a movement? Those questions will have to be answered before we can see the change that we so often visualize in our Utopian mindsets.

Now I said all of that to say this: $574,257,720 and no cents. That's the amount of money that was spent by both the Obama and McCain campaigns in this presidential election. $574,257,720 and no cents. While people are losing homes and jobs; children are without books or health care; and poverty abounds in what has historically been the richest nation in the world.

$574,257,720 and no cents. I applaud those who gave to the Obama campaign. Kudos to you. You helped elect a figure of transformation to lead a broken nation. Congratulations. But I also must ask what have you given to your community? What have you given to the young black males in the Mississippi Delta whose third grade reading scores have resulted in the construction of the Tallahatchie County Prison. What have you given to the young white females in northern Massachusetts who think having children in high school out of wedlock is a viable option? What have you given to your community that has liquor stores but no libraries; police task forces but no parks; gangs but not grocery stores; anxiety but no after school programs? What have you given to your community to help change it?

The same applies to those politicians who speak so eloquently about how they plan to improve America, Obama included. $574,257,720 and no cents. Will they (McCain, Hillary, Romney, and the rest of the bunch too) go out and raise money for Queens or Decatur or Compton or Chicago or Detroit or Jackson? Will they run television commercials that inform people that the surge will work? But this will be a surge of community engagement and activism that ensures every citizen equal access to those resources needed to be free from bondage of disproportionate wealth.

I do not write this to chastise any one person or group but to encourage us all. We have seen what action can do, but we must not stop here. We must continually ask ourselves: How Can We? How can we make our community and our nation and better place. Obama has often been compared to JFK, and I will close by paraphrasing his words: ask not what your country or your community can do for you, but what you can do for your country and your community.

Peace.