If you've moved, changed your name or want to change your party affiliation, you must re-register by Jan. 22. However, if you want to join me in voting for Barack Obama for president and you did not declare a party preference when you registered, you don't need to re-register; you can simply ask for a Democratic ballot when you vote. Early voting is already underway at San Francisco City Hall.

Here are the Bay View's recommendations for the San Francisco ballot. Then I'll explain why I choose Obama.

President of the U.S.: Barack Obama

State Propositions

No on 91, Transportation Funds

Yes on 92, Community Colleges

No on 93, Term Limits

Yes on 94-97, Indian Gaming

San Francisco Propositions

No on A, Park Privatization

No on B, Police Retirement

No on C, Alcatraz Peace Center

Barack Obama got my hopes up nearly a year ago, and I've supported him every since. This young family man with the funny name will fill you with hope, too, if you let him, and he is quickly becoming the hope of the world.

Kishore Mahbubani wrote in Newsweek in a story called "If the world could vote" that when 126 million Americans vote for president this year, the result is felt by 6.6 billion people around the world.

"[T]he world has yet to pick its favorite," he wrote. "It is clear, however, whose election would have the most dramatic effect: Barack Obama's. In one fell swoop, an Obama victory would eliminate at least half the massive anti-Americanism now felt around the world. Eight hundred million Africans would get a tremendous boost to their self-esteem and cultural pride. A son of their soil would, for the first time, occupy the White House, and many would whisper, approvingly, ‘Only in America.'"

A Kenyan was overheard saying in Nairobi, "A Luo will be president of the United States before a Luo is president of Kenya." Both Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga and Obama's grandmother are Luos.

Immediately after Obama's incredible victory in Iowa, legendary journalist John Maxwell wrote in the Jamaica Observer: "‘ They said this day would never come,' he said.

"But there were enough people who believed in Barack Obama's dream and message of hope to turn the conventional wisdom on its head and to confound people like me who didn't think it could be done. ...

"I didn't believe it was possible, and that is probably because facts alone can't give the texture of a leader's appeal to his people. Some things have got to be felt, smelled and tasted. Clearly the people of Iowa, 94 percent white, smelled, felt and tasted the hope for a new and better world that Obama symbolized. ...

"It may not be morning in America just yet, but the rest of the world glimpses the bright streaks of a new day."

When Black Panther veteran and New York City Councilman Charles Barron held a press conference on Black Solidarity Day Nov. 5 to announce his endorsement of Obama, he was asked why he supports a man less militant than he is.

"He came from the South Side of Chicago. That's a Black community where he took care and fought for Black people," Barron responded. "He's introduced racial profiling legislation in the state of Illinois. His pastor, Jeremiah Wright, believes in Black liberation theology. He's done a lot. He's speaking about poverty now. ...

"He said he supports the Black community. He's said he's been Black all his life. You said he's against Black nationalism. He never said that. Matter of fact, he goes to a Black liberation theologist church where they believe in a Black Christ. So, he is for Black people."

Sen. Barack Obama walks with his grandmother Sarah Hussein Obama and other family members while visiting his ancestral home in Nyangoma village in Kenya on Aug. 26, 2006. Photo: Jacob Wire, EPA

Like me, Barron apparently asked himself, "If not Obama, then who?" Not Hillary Clinton. Referring to her habit of visiting Black churches to grab the Black vote, Barron says she doesn't fight for Black issues and calls her a weekend friend of Blacks but a weekday snob.

In a BET interview that aired Jan. 15, Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, Obama quipped that when he's asked, "Are you Black enough?" he answers, "Well, compared to whom?"

AlterNet writer Joshua Holland says in a Jan. 7 story that "progressives' best hope with Barack Obama would be that he use his message of ‘hope' and reconciliation to bring millions of new voters into the process for the first time, gather an enormous amount of political capital, and then turn around, take off the gloves and shove that mandate right down the GOP's throat."

In his victory speech Jan. 3 in Iowa, Obama explained: "Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope. For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path.

"It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it. ...

"Hope is the bedrock of this nation - the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be."

Named BET's Person of the Year for Politics, he said in the BET interview: "I did not run for the presidency to fulfill some long-held ambition or because I believed it was somehow owed to me. I chose to run in this election - at this moment - because of what Dr. King called ‘the fierce urgency of now.' ... After all, those who came before us did not strike a blow against injustice only so that we would allow injustice to fester in our time."

In the thrill of the Iowa victory, young San Franciscan Justin DeCastro wrote on Jan. 3: "I can feel the ‘momentum' and the ‘urgency' of the Obama candidacy at this moment and from this bedside as I recuperate and reminisce on my father's passion to see a person of color in the White House. For as long as I can remember, I had shared my father's sentiments. Tonight brings those feelings so much closer to fulfillment, fruition and reality than any previous presidential campaign. ...

"Barack is right! It's time for a CHANGE from politics as usual and from racist oppression and injustice as usual. By the color of his skin alone, we can hold him accountable to that one mandate by the people.

"For people of color and communities of poverty in America and for all who truly believe in racial equality (and not just in the rhetoric), the prospect of having a BLACK president in the WHITE House seems almost an unreachable fantasy. ...

"In Barack Obama, we have some hope at last! No, he ain't no socialist, but yes, he's a Black guy who's bound to have an impact on racial equality and justice in the U.S.A. just by sitting in the Oval Office. ...

"I do believe that for the younger generation of U.S. Americans, and especially for young U.S. Americans of color, of disadvantage and of poverty, the idea that Barack Obama, a Black man, can have a real shot at the U.S. presidency is already an uplifting force in their lives. Kids in every ghetto, barrio and rat-infested, blighted neighborhood throughout the U.S.A. finally will have some real ‘hope' to ‘be all that they can be' ... Can you imagine the look on the faces of the white supremacists in this country and around the globe as Obama is sworn into the office of president of the United States of America? PRICELESS! ...

"Folks, we cannot afford to waste our votes on delusions of electing socialists into power. We must work with what we've got, and in my view, Barack Obama is who we've got for sure in our favor at this time in this country for this generation of U.S. Americans. We can ‘help' to change his politics by applying people's pressure on him to go progressive. And no one - Left, Middle or Right - can ever change the color of his skin. So if racism and fascism must continue to develop as they have, at the very least we know that if and when ‘they' come for us, ‘they' must come for the colored president of the United States of America as well.

"Can you fathom THAT?"

Olushola Camara, a contributor to TheBlackList on Riseup.net, shares these wise words: "No problem supporting Obama, but we need to understand that his refusal to address the state of the Black community as part of the overall American community should tell us that our fate is in our own hands, as it should be. Better yet, we should be organized to tell Obama what we want as a Black community. We should explicitly ask him how will his presidency empower the Black community.

"Obama may be innocent, but others are taking his no race talk to free themselves from any obligation or consequences of guilt. And to neutralize Black people having a sense of responsibility and commitment to the Black community, they want us to see ourselves as only unhyphenated Americans. ...

"I predict the subliminal response among many in White America will be fear (slave era conditioning). Our overwhelming support of Obama will be seen as an attack on them; and if Obama wins the democratic nomination, many Whites will hold their nose and vote for any Republican in order to neutralize the perceived threat.

"So vote for Obama, but never forget what has happened to us, where we are, and the work that remains to be done. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Black power; that is, empowerment of Black people. America has not progressed so far for us to forget this."

Finally, I must mention a message on TheBlackList to Black America from an African living in France: "Redeem your Africanness and put aside your differences. Support the brother.

"Stop giving me the reasons why not and give me the reasons why. He has ‘it' - and it's his time. Come on, Africans, wake up!"

I urge you to join Obama's door to door campaign in Bayview Hunters Point or wherever you are. Don't blow this extraordinary opportunity to free yourself and your community. The Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primaries could decide the nomination, and California holds the key.

The African brother concludes - and so do I - with this blessing: "Nkosi Sikelel i-Obama!" ("God bless Obama!")

Contact Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff at (415) 671-0789 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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