I am stepping down as the Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com.� No, this in no way represents a political parting of the ways.� For largely personal reasons I have decided that I need to alter my role.� I will remain on the Editorial Board and I will continue to write for the magazine.� I decided that BlackCommentator.com is at a point where it needs a new pair of eyes through which a new Executive Editor can look at the challenges facing the magazine.�

The new Executive Editor is David A. Love, JD, a member of the BC Editorial Board whose column �Color of Law� appears on a regular basis in BC. David is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to The Huffington Post, theGrio, The Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He also blogs at davidalove.com, NewsOne, Daily Kos, and Open Salon.

I think that you will be very pleased with my successor, by the way; I know that I am.

I joined the BlackCommetator.com family several years ago at a moment of crisis for the magazine.� The founding Executive Editor, Glen Ford, had abruptly departed and there was a genuine question as to whether the magazine was going to continue.� I assumed a de facto Executive Editor role in order to assist in the rebuilding of the magazine.� Eventually I took on the formal role.

What I set out to do was to broaden the ideological perspective and readership of BC.� I had felt that the magazine had not represented enough of the expanse of progressive Black politics.� As such, along with the publisher and the manager editor, we set out to build an editorial board and to expand both the number and breath of the contributors to the magazine.� I am very proud of the results.

We also worked together to begin to address the challenge faced by nearly every on-line publication: money.� Although the results are far from in and our decisions did not please everyone, we have begun to make progress.� Part of that progress is the acknowledgement from you, the readers, that genuine publications cannot exist on the Web without real financial support.� We have a very long way to go, and nothing is certain, but we have made some baby steps.

This is not the first time that I have found myself assisting in a transition.� My tenure as president of TransAfrica Forum was, to a great extent, marked by transitioning from the period during which a charismatic leader ran the organization, into the development of an organization that could outlast its founder.� This is always a difficult challenge, but one of the important components of this role is knowing when it is time to move on.� I have reached that moment.

BC, as I noted, needs a new pair of eyes.� We need to build upon the stabilization and renewal efforts of the last few years in order to experiment with everything from a new look to new components of BC.� I look forward to my successor working with the editorial board, the managing editor and the publisher to realize this potential.

So, this is not a farewell.� I am simply changing roles.� I have a set of projects I feel that I must focus upon outside of BC.� But I also believe something that my folks always said when I was a kid:� you leave a party when you are having fun.� I have been having a great time as Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com, and so much of that has been based on the responses that I have received from you, the readers of our magazine.� Thanks for your support and love.� Please give my successor the same, and help BC make its next leap forward.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.