From Color of Change email

As a candidate, Barack Obama talked about "changing business as usual" in Washington. The reality is that not much has changed. Rather than truly challenging the entrenched corporate interests that have dominated our politics for so long, President Obama has often tried to negotiate and work with them. During the campaign, Obama often said that change "comes from the bottom up" — but once in office, he hasn't, in any major way, invited ordinary people to pressure the political system, or engaged them in the process of creating change. The movement built around getting Obama elected was largely ignored after he took office. The President's greatest asset — his millions of supporters — were basically abandoned and implicitly told "we got this," when that simply wasn't the case.

Moving forward, Republicans are likely to pose even more of an obstacle to the changes Democrats promised, and many in the media are arguing that the only way forward for Democrats is to move to the right, chart an even tamer course, and compromise further with Republicans and the large corporate interests they represent. We believe the truth is exactly the opposite. Black Americans and everyone else who turned out in 2008 looking for change need to see Democrats fighting harder to deliver that change and taking true leadership to engage all of us in helping create that change. It's what Democrats need to do if they want our votes in the future, and it's the right thing to do if they really want to move this country forward.