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.

The untold story of the mid-term elections was that independents drove the reconsideration of the war in Iraq, forcing the Democrats to adopt a more oppositional posture to the policies of the Neo-Cons.

I came downtown to tonight’s meeting even though I’m still in the early stages of recovery from compound pneumonia because I wanted to speak directly with all of you. Thanks for all your good wishes and calls while I was in the hospital.

Though the media rendered an image of the angry white male to define the independent voter, beginning in 1992 those inside the movement know the true story to be otherwise.