In the recent New York City mayoral election, the vote total on the Independence Party line—a party which I am a founder of—was 150,073. That result broke numerous records and that success has political meaning for the African American community.

When we finally get far enough down the road on health care reform, it will become clear that a driving force in the intensity of the fight was a heart attack. Not the medical kind. The political kind.

On election night I watched Barack Obama give his victory speech in Grant Park, cheered on by millions of Americans across the country. They were celebrating the fall of barriers - racial barriers, cultural barriers, partisan and political barriers.

The more you look at it, the more you see an absence of dialogue in New York’s black community about the choice in the Democratic presidential primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The majority of the black political establishment has closed ranks behind Hillary and used that to tamp down public debate on which candidacy – Obama’s or Hillary’s – makes the most sense for black voters to support.