I am writing an open letter today on behalf of 80,000+ Ethiopians that reside in Virginia, on behalf of the 14,000+ registered Ethiopian-American voters who reside in the 8th Congressional District, on behalf of the millions of Virginians who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and most importantly, on behalf of over 500,000 of your fellow Virginians who do not currently have health insurance. I beseech you to forgo a publicity stunt and follow your human compassion to care for those who have the least amongst us.

I have read your profile and I am moved by your story. You are an advocate for health care, paying special attention to those who we most often ignore yet need our help the most—Virginians who have mental health issues. You fought for and championed legislation in 2002 that provided a more humane treatment for those are tormented by mental illness. Your tenacity for human compassion and history of caring for the impoverished amongst us shows you are a …

Today we are calling all those who chanted “YES WE CAN” and “WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR” to once again channel your energy to push congress to enact the Health Care Reform with Public Option. The fierce urgency of now is upon us NOW!!! Our country desperately needs us to get up from the comfort of our daily routine as we did to help elect President Obama and help deliver the change we believed in and voted for in 2008. This is a call to action, a clarion call to do all we can to make Health Care Reform with Public Option law of the land.

Health Care Reform without Public option is not an option. There cannot be a healthcare reform without the Public Option. How can Congress make health insurance mandatory and not have a public option to offset the cost? How is that benefiting everyday Americans who are already struggling to make ends meet? So now our government will force us – the American people – to get healthcare insurance and leave us at the mercy of the…

“You are selling out your country to appease Eritreans!”

“You are a colonial pig who just wants to rob Eritrean of our nationality!”

These comments were made by an Ethiopian and an Eritrean respectively. So what inspired such accusations? How can I be both an appeaser and a colonizer at the same time? Well, last week I wrote an article called “Yikirta” in which I apologized to my Eritrean haweys and hafteys for the closed mind I harbored in the past. A closed mind that made me insist that Eritrea was not a legitimate country, a closed mind that made me insist that “we are all the same, the same closed mind that would shudder when hearing someone speaking in Tigrinya instead of Amharic.

For the longest time, I thought I was enlightened. I thought that I was wise to insist that “we are one”. How paternalistic of me to think that I knew better what was good for Eritreans. It was not until recently that I …

I have been involved in a lot of activities throughout my life. I took part in the Ethiopians for Obama campaign, I was involved in “Democracy Marches” when I was a teenager, I have started a lot of initiatives and businesses throughout my life, all of which I have been proud of. But perhaps the proudest moment to date, one that eclipses the election of Obama in 2008, took place last night.

I am a member of a facebook fan page called United Apart. The aim of the page is to bring together like minded Ethiopians and Eritreans and give them a platform to exchange ideas, to have a dialogue, to discuss historical injustices and ways to work together going forward while we respect each other’s differences and sovereignty. And for this, I have been attacked by…

On this day today, 114 years ago, Hebret defeated Hate. On this day today, 114 years ago, a band of Ethiopian and Eritrean brothers and sisters united to deliver a stunning blow to the menace of colonialism in a place called Adwa. Up until this time, European powers had divided Africa—and for the most part the rest of the world—into a personal chess board. They carved out chunks of land throughout the continent and proclaimed it as a God given vestige, the people that inhabited those lands deemed slaves and surfs forever. Adwa, in one compelling moment, shattered the myth of a superior race; Adwa shattered the idea that Africans were lesser humans. In one compelling moment, Adwa gave hope to millions of enslaved people across the world.

On the dawning of the 19th century, throughout Africa, every inch of the continent was…