Good afternoon. Thank you so much, Dr. Turner-Lee for that warm introduction. I can’t tell you, Ralph how wonderful it is to see and to be with you and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies at today’s very timely event, Blackout: The Impact of the Digital Age on the Broadcast Media.

Although the title of today’s event cleverly alludes to African Americans, most of the issues that both panels are discussing today significantly affect black, brown, red, yellow, white ethnics, and non-ethnic whites and collectives of minority and ethnic groups, and communities, all just the same. Thanks, especially, to my supporters from the South Side of Chicago and in the Southwest Chicago suburbs as well as my kindred souls and friends around the country who want so desperately to see minorities and small businesses fare better than they are currently. They are the ones who are directly responsible for ensuring that I can stand in front of you today.

The Joint Center has been one of the nation’s pre-eminent think tanks and public research and policy organizations — not just with respect to societal, economic, and domestic issues that are of great concern to African-Americans. But, in reality, many of these same issues impact all Americans — those who are underserved in terms of broadband and healthcare delivery, those who have no, or little, political voice, those who are chronically under-employed in our tight labor market, and those who are worse off in terms of their personal net worth and future financial security as compared to their parents and, even, their grandparents only one to several generations ago.

Read more at The Hill.