By Roy Douglas Malonson

John Qunicy Adams encourages one to, “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.” This is what we as a Black community must remember. Oftentimes, I hear this rhetoric about, “My one little vote won’t count, or make a difference.” So many people have resonated this throughout the ages of times that people truly believe this. I am here to tell you, not only does your vote count, but so does your money.

I hear people complaining all the time about what they don’t have and yet they overlook the simple most powerful tools that they do. It is all about where you spend your money. We see it happening everyday. The businesses, people, industries, and markets that you patronage is a representation of where and who you empower. There are people that travel all the way across town to support other businesses, when they pass up similar establishments leaving their communities.

What you have to do is use what you have to gain respect.  If you don’t believe that you empower people and establishments that you spend your money at just reflect back to the Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott. The Boycott was a social protest campaign that was initiated in 1955 and left the country consumed with racial segregation. Amidst great leaders that led the boycott with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Abernathy were typical everyday citizens that had decided that enough was enough. With one voice, heart, and mind the Blacks at that time pulled together to set the boycott into play.

If it was not for a consolidated group of unified Blacks pulling together, who knows how long this treatment would have gone on? Blacks realized over fifty years ago what I am trying to reiterate today. Those who you support are those whom you empower. The crucial thing is sometimes people support the very ones that are hurting them and don’t even realize it.