NEW YORK (AP) — President Barack Obama has been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2012.

“We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America,” Time Editor Rick Stengel told NBC’s “Today” show, where he announced the selection on Wednesday.

The short list for the honor included Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot in the head for advocating for girls’ education, as well as Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Italian physicist Fabiola Giannati.

Obama also received the honor in 2008, when he was President-elect.

In an interview with Time, Obama said his re-election “may have been more satisfying a win than 2008.”

“We’ve gone through a very difficult time,” Obama told the magazine. “The American people have rightly been frustrated at the pace of change, and the economy is still struggling, and this president we elected is imperfect, and yet, despite all that, this is who we want to be. That’s a good thing.”

Last year, Time honored “The Protester,” citing dissent across the Middle East that spread to Europe and the United States, saying the protesters reshaped global politics.

Time’s “Person of the Year” is the person or thing that has most influenced the culture and the news during the past year for good or for ill. In 2010, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg received the honor.

Other previous winners have included Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Bono and President George W. Bush.

On Saturday, October 20th, the Georgia State Chapter of Black Women for Obama led by State Chapter Director Christine Williams, in conjunction with the Georgia GOTV Coalition, Rallies & 10 City Bus Tour and the Georgia Democratic Party held a FANTASTIC rally in Gwinnett County at Rhodes Jordan Park!

Speakers at the event included Georgia House Representative Tyrone Brooks, Donna McLeod, BWFO National Director of Voter Outreach, Patricia Wilson-Smith, Executive Director for BWFO, Judy Jones, BWFO National Director of Membership Outreach, as well as a number of local candidates for office, including Renita Hamilton, State House Candidate for District 105, Jennah Es-Sudan, Candidate for School Board District I, and many others. The rally was inspirational and exciting, and ALL of Gwinnett County is now FIRED UP AND READY TO GO on November 6th!!!!

When it comes to registering and voting, having the right information can often mean the difference between casting a ballot and being left out of the process. Americans – particularly young people and communities of color – are much more accustomed to receiving information via their mobile phones. This election cycle, it’s vital for voters to be able to access key information right in the palm of their hand.

In order to meet the needs of the Digital Age, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, National Association of Latino Appointed and Elected Officials Education Fund, New Organizing Institute, Rock the Vote and Verified Voting Foundation have joined forces to deploy the Election Protection Smartphone Application to provide all information and resources, in English and Spanish (branded Ya Es Hora), that voters need to fully participate in the 2012 elections.

The Election Protection App will be available on all smartphones and provides all the information and resources voters need to register and cast a meaningful ballot in the palm of their hands. The App will allow voters to:

•    Verify their registration;
•    Register to vote;
•    Look up their polling place;
•    Review key voting rules and regulations for their  state;
•    See what type of machine they vote on; and
•    Contact Election Protection via phone or email to report a problem or get answers to their questions.

Scan the QR code below with your smart phone to download the app:

Suzanne Gamboa

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Deidra Reese isn’t waiting for people to come to her to find out whether they are registered to vote.

With iPad in hand, Reese is going to community centers, homes and churches in nine Ohio cities, looking up registrations to make sure voters have proper ID and everything else they need to cast ballots on Election Day.

“We are not going to give back one single inch. We have fought too long and too hard,” said Reese, 45, coordinator of the Columbus-based Ohio Unity Coalition, an affiliate of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

Reese is part of a cadre of black women engaged in a revived wave of voting rights advocacy four years after the historic election of the nation’s first black president. Provoked by voting law changes in various states, they have decided to help voters navigate the system — a fitting role, they say, given that black women had the highest turnout of any group of voters in 2008.

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BWFO Oregon State Chapter Members

The Oregon Chapter of Black Women for Obama has managed to secure a facility to work out of to conduct voter registrations.  Yesterday the chapter held their regular meeting with approximately 40 women in the new facility for voters registration, and over 150 people showed up for the grand opening! Congratulations to D’Norgia Price, BWFO State Chapter Director for Oregon, and all the ladies there who are making it happen for the President!

BWFO Making a Difference!

This information comes from the Obama for America Website! It shows the activity from 2008 until now for Black Women for Obama, nationwide! Look at the number of calls made, the number of events held, the amount of money raised for President Obama in 2008!!!

We can do it again! President Obama NEEDS our help! If you’re not already a member of the BarackObama.com website, visit it NOW to register, and join the “Black Women for Obama” group and be counted as one of our members! Then give your time, and your money heading up to the final stretch of the election so that everyone knows that BWFO is a force for change in 2012 as well!

FiveThirtyEight is devoted to rigorous analysis of politics, polling, public affairs, sports, science and culture, largely through statistical means.

They are a polling aggregation website with a blog created by Nate Silver. Sometimes colloquially referred to as 538 dot com or just 538, the website takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college. Established on March 7, 2008, as FiveThirtyEight.com, in August 2010 the blog became a licensed feature of The New York Times online and was renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver’s Political Calculus.

During the U.S. presidential primaries and general election of 2008, the site compiled polling data through a unique methodology derived from Silver’s experience in baseball sabermetrics to “balance out the polls with comparative demographic data” and “weighting each poll based on the pollster’s historical track record, sample size, and recentness of the poll”.

Click here to check out their current Presidential Election analysis!

Thanks to Moonyene Jackson, State Chapter Director for Maryland for the candid shots taken at the planning meeting of BWFO/Maryland Eastern Shore and the Student Leadership at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES)!

By Patricia Wilson-Smith

As the 2012 Presidential Election makes its way towards the ever-important party nominating conventions, African Americans in this country are busy waging a quiet war within over its continued support of President Obama.

The issue? His personal stance on same sex marriage.

Just this week, a group calling itself The Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) announced that they will actively oppose President Obama’s re-election bid on the basis of his evolved opinion of same sex-unions. As a “…grass roots movement of African American Christians who believe in family values”, they apparently liken gay marriage to something so heinous that they’re willing to cede the election to a party whose policies have done more to wreck the American family than anything else in this country ever could.

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