On Tuesday, January 12, 2016, Americans of all ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds will gather around television screens across the nation to hear President Obama deliver his final 'State of the Union' address.
Scheduled a couple weeks earlier than normal, this speech will presumably highlight the progress and accomplishments of the past year and outline Obama's vision and priorities in 2016.
We know that Americans can expect at least one of these priorities to be gun control. In early January, after failing to secure Congressional support, Obama bypassed Congress and announced executive action on tougher gun restrictions.
During an emotional speech at the White House, surrounded by family members of gun violence victims, he spoke of tightening sales of firearms and expanding background checks.
Coming off the heels of a year in which we averaged more than one mass shooting per day in America, this lightening rod issue is urgent and timely.
But in addition to gun control and other critical, unresolved issues, shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility must be a solid priority during this final year in office.
The president has one year left to fulfill his first-term promise to end indefinite detention, restore justice, and close Guantanamo.
On January 11, 2016, the day before he addresses Congress and fellow Americans, our nation will mark the beginning of the 15th year that this prison - where more than 100 prisoners remain indefinitely detained - is in operation.
The majority of these prisoners will never be indicted. Many have been cleared for transfer, yet still remain in captivity. Some were cleared for transfer; yet, due in part to bureaucracy, they never made it out alive.
Scores of other detainees continue to hunger strike to protest their detention. They are forced to submit to inhumane force-feeding through feeding tubes.
Guantanamo has made a mockery of our justice system, jeopardizes our national security, has drained billions of dollars in taxpayer money, and is a dark stain on the fabric of our nation's history for future generations.
The release of the heavily redacted Senate torture report, and accounts from former prison guards, have graphically depicted living conditions for detainees.
A moving excerpt from a letter written by one detainee, Adnan Latif, to his attorney gives some insight into the circumstances and environment endured by prisoners:
"I am moving towards a dark cave and a dark life in the shadow of a dark prison. This is a prison that does not know humanity and does not know except the language of power, oppression, and humiliation for whoever enters it.
It does not differentiate between the criminal and the innocent, and between the right or the sick or the elderly who is weak and is unable to bear and a man who is still bearing all this from the prison administration that is evil in mercy.
Hardship is the only language that is used here. Anybody who is able to die will be able to achieve happiness for himself; he has no other hope except that.
A world power [America] failed to safeguard peace and human rights and from saving me. I will do whatever I am able to do to rid myself of the imposed death on me at any moment in this prison."
Adnan Latif was found unconscious in his cell on September 10, 2012. He was 32 years old. Latif had been cleared for release in 2004, 2007, 2009, and again in 2010; yet, he died in captivity.
Silence is complicity. It is our moral obligation to collectively lift our voices after being confronted with the knowledge of the cruel, unethical abuses that have taken place there, and to demand that the Obama administration takes action.
It is too late to save Adnan Latif, but there are others like him who remain unjustly imprisoned. They have been incessantly dehumanized, but these men are also fathers and sons, brothers and husbands.
In Fall 2015, one such prisoner, Shaker Aamer, was released and returned home to the UK. He was the last British resident at Gaunatanamo, and has described his reunion with his estranged wife and four children as "14 years of pain being washed away in joy and tears in that moment."
The last year of Obama's presidency is an opportunity to correct the wrongs done and restore freedom to other prisoners like Aamer who have been cleared of wrongdoing so they can also be reunited with their loved ones.
The lives of these prisoners and their families have been impacted beyond measure, and the lack of indictment or evidence pointing to their guilt is a damning testimony that their continued detention is a crime against humanity.
Congress has posed every obstacle, but the Obama administration has the authority to take steps to bring detainees to trial as applicable, or transfer and release them.
This must be done to protect national security, restore faith in our beleaguered justice system, and preserve the constitutional principles that define our values.
It must be done for the sake of lives that have been directly or indirectly affected by this travesty, and ultimately for the sake of our union.
Fulfilling the promise to close Guantanamo must be among the Obama administration's top priorities during the final year in office. We cannot erase this stain, but we must repair the damage as best we can and close this dark chapter in our nation's history.