Promoting People of Color at Netroots Nation
Commentary by dopper0189 Black Kos Managing Editor
Once again the Netroots Nation annual convention is almost here. Black Kos will once again be co-presenting a panel. For more information here is the link: Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere
Promoting People of Color at Netroots Nation Panel; Friday 06/08/2012 at 4:30 pm Ballroom C
This panel will address the needs, successes and obstacles to having greater participation from people of color in the blogosphere. Using the models of the Native American Netroots and Black Kos as a beginning point for the discussion, we’ll cover topics such as color blindness vs. representation and how to get historically underrepresented groups and their views heard. We’ll discuss how to organize outreach between the larger blogosphere and blogs that are specific to communities of color and how to form stronger connections to ongoing organizing efforts and activism in communities of color. We’ll also focus on how organizations can promote diversity within new grassroots organizations.
Led by: David Reid
Panelists: Renee Chantler, Neeta Lind, Denise Oliver-Velez, Ian Reifowitz
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Good to see these numbers reversing. The Root: Encouraging Signs for MLB Diversity.
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When Major League Baseball celebrated Jackie Robinson Day in April of this year, it was with the lowest percentage of African-American players since the earliest days of the sport's integration, USA Sports reported.
When the numbers began to dip dramatically in recent years, the league made a concerted effort to expand its African-American talent pool through its opening of urban youth academies and the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, or RBI, program.
And Monday night's amateur draft suggested that the league has been having some success with those efforts, Fox News reported on Wednesday. The 31 first-round picks included seven African Americans (representing 22 percent of the picks), the most by total and percentage in 20 years, according to research by MLB.
Number two overall pick Bryan Buxton (Fox Sports Net)
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Nearly $1 billion in investments in Haiti’s northern corridor is creating fears that the jobs will lead to the creation of slums. Miami Herald: New industrial park in northern Haiti sparks controversy.
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n Haiti, where so many promises of change turn to dust, the evolving landscape was worth the moment of contemplation: warehouse-sized factory shells rising from fertile soil, bulldozers rumbling distantly as they cleared farmland to build hundreds of homes and unemployed young men chattering under a mango tree about the change that was coming to Caracol.
“Caracol is getting another image,” said Prospère, 30, a mother of three. “There are a lot of people who weren’t working, but they are now working. And a lot of people who want to work and who I believe will be soon working.”
For the bucolic but impoverished fishing village on Haiti’s northern coast, the sight of foreign dollars creating new housing and jobs is filled with hope — and worry that the multi-million dollar investments also will spawn the all-too-familiar slums.
“It is almost certain,” said Jilson St. Tilien, as he watched a game of dominoes under the tree. “People need to make a living and they will move here to do so.”
Desperate for any good news after the devastating January 2010 earthquake, the Haitian government signed off on the 600-acre industrial park in this remote rural village without preparing for how the region should eventually look — or absorb the promised jobs. Only now is a zoning plan being developed, but residents and Haiti watchers wonder if it’s coming too late.
Their anxiety is fueled by Haiti’s historically weak institutions and the rush by the international community and Haiti’s leaders to show progress. It is also a reflection of the challenges of working in Haiti where there is continuous friction between need-to-spend foreign aid agencies, which are often perceived as arrogant, and a weak central government.
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A local sports hero, a New York real estate developer and a well-known architect are teaming up to build a soccer stadium in Haiti's notorious Cite Soleil, hoping to revive the seaside shantytown known throughout the hemisphere for its extreme poverty and gang battles. Miami Herald: Investors plan soccer stadium for Haiti shantytown.
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Foreign investors in Haiti have largely directed their efforts at rebuilding from a devastating 2010 earthquake, focusing their funds on Port-au-Prince and the overlapping cities that make up the capital and the country's sleepy coastlines.
But ex-Haiti soccer star Robert "Boby" Duval has masterminded the $5 million stadium project, which he says will address problems that predate the 2010 disaster. Developer Delos LLC and architect Carlos Zapata are working with him on the project in a slum on the outskirts of the capital, full of tin shacks and open sewage canals formerly shunned by investors, avoided by diplomats and at one point considered so dangerous that U.N. peacekeepers would only enter it in armored vehicles.
"Cite Soleil was destroyed way before the earthquake," said Duval. "This stadium is going to clean up Cite Soleil.... and I'm betting on it."
The 12,000-seat stadium will be called the "Phoenix Stadium," referring to hopes that the shantytown will rise up.
The organizers also hope the stadium, scheduled to break ground within six months and due to be built by the end of 2013, will bring an initial 500 jobs and inject commerce into Cite Soleil, where politicians have long gone so far as to pay gang leaders to stir up trouble.
In this May 17, 2012 photo, youths play with soccer balls in a field that is part of the L'Athletique D'Haiti sports program at the northeastern edge of Cite Soleil, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Dieu Nalio Chery / AP Photo
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A positive note from Wisconsin. Colorlines: Young and Black Voters Turn Out in Wisconsin Despite Suppression Efforts.
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It may not feel like there’s anything positive to make out of the unsuccessful bid to recall Gov. Scott Walker in yesterday’s Wisconsin elections, but there were hints of optimism. Young voters and African-American voters did more than their part to show up, according to exit polls and early reports, despite significant efforts to confuse and challenge them from groups that profess to be fighting voter fraud.
In Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s seven-point loss to Walker, voters aged 18-29 increased their slice of the electorate from 15 percent in 2010 to 16 percent yesterday. Black voters came out mob-deep. John Nichols, who’s been covering Wisconsin inside-out for The Nation, reported, “Turnout was up dramatically, so much so that on election day election clerks had to be shifted to predominantly African-American wards.”
This was mainly true in Racine and Milwaukee, where young people and people of color have seen enough murder and lack of educational and economic opportunity to drive them to the polls, recall or not.
“We had several hundred youth out there showing that they are invested in their future, that they do understand the politics of today and that if folks are willing to listen to us we can help create meaningful change,” said the deputy director of the League of Young Voters, Carey Jenkins, who simply goes by “C. J.” He noted that in the last six weeks, League youth knocked on over 110,000 doors. “It felt like 2008 all over again.” A Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal-Sentinal graph shows the shift in youth votes between 2010 and 2012:
It wasn’t enough to carry the whole state, which mostly went to Walker. One takeaway from this election, though, is that massive grassroots organizing is no longer the exclusive domain of Democrats and their civil rights and labor allies. The right wing has found ways to go mob deep in their own way, as evidenced by the presence of the Tea Party group True the Vote, a group that wants their “poll observer” activities to make voters feel like the police are following them.
True the Vote traveled all the way from Texas for this Wisconsin bout, stringing along hundreds if not thousands of poll observers from around the country. It’s worth examining how close they are working with the Republican Party.
By about 2 p.m., Carolyn Castore, who coordinated an initiative between Wisconsin Election Protection and the state’s League of Women Voters to field voter complaints, said she’d taken about 140 calls, mostly from college students who were challenged on their right to vote. Many of those students were challenged by True the Vote poll watchers, said Castore. (True the Vote mocked those students on Twitter).
College students were hampered by a new voter residency requirement that says a citizen must live in one location for 28 days in order to register to vote. Before the 2011 law went into effect the requirement was only 10 days. Many students graduated in mid-May, went home from campuses to live with their families, and thus were affected by the 28-day rule.
Also, a photo voter ID bill that passed this year, but was blocked by two judges, was not supposed to be in effect. But students complained about being challenged on ID grounds anyway.
Local hip hop artist helped in the recall effort.
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The Front Porch is now open!
Grab a seat and get a plate! If you are new-introduce yourself and join in.
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