Despite a regular stream of criticism from politicians and educators about the law--some for its complete abolition, others for severe revision to the point of rendering it unrecognizable from the law's original goals--the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 remains, for the most part, safe and unchanged.
That's not to say that it hasn't been challenged and at times, threatened. But one of the more serious threats was unmistakably denied last week, when a federal judge ruled against Connecticut's lawsuit challenging NCLB as an unfunded mandate.
The root of Connecticut's lawsuit was a claim that the cost of fulfilling the annual 3rd through 8th grade testing requirements of NCLB was greater than the amount of money the federal government was providing the state in Title I funding. Connecticut sought an exemption from the US Department of Education to continue testing only in 4th, 6th, and 8th grades as it was doing prior to the law's passage. But the federal circuit court judge ruled that Connecticut had failed to provide any evidence that the federal government was not providing enough money to pay for the testing. NCLB's mandate to test every year between 3rd and 8th grade and once in high school, in other words, was sufficiently funded.
The case itself was simple in its holding, and relatively uncontroversial. The more interesting question for those of us concerned with the implications for chilrden is, where is all of the anti-NCLB sentiment coming from? The law has pretty universal goals, after all: to reduce the achievement gap and ensure school accountability.
My observations about the origins of anti-NCLB sentiment among educators is that it is partly due to top-down teacher union influence, and partly due to a bogey-man type mentality. In the former regard, national level officials in the NEA and AFT have long regarded NCLB as a problematic path for reform, since its chief proposal (school level accountability for student achievement) diverts attention from policies that would enhance teacher union membership or teacher benefits (such as class-size reduction or across-the-board teacher pay raises).
In the latter regard, my experience is that a significant number of teachers are upset about NCLB because of a post hoc ergo proper hoc* logical fallacy. Essentially, teachers get frustrated about their jobs for a multitude of reasons (low administrative support, lack of staff-wide teacher quality, poor student behavior, pay that they believe to be too low, to name a few). Many of these reasons may just have to do with the fact that teaching is, of itself, a challenging job. But since the passage of NCLB, teachers have attributed their angers and frustrations to the laws, rather than to more subtle demands that have long existed on the profession.
In short, teachers are blaming the NCLB-bogey man for non-NCLB-related problems. A great example of this is when teachers blame NCLB for high-stakes testing policies that school districts and states decide to implement. NCLB itself says nothing about making a certain grade level test a requirement for grade promotion; the states are to blame for it!
Sadly, this kind of attribution problem is probably par for the course any time a significant policy change is made without immediate results. But what we must make sure to avoid is giving up on a potentially positive policy because of wrong-headed backlash.
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Indiana and North Carolina Outcomes
In the most exciting news I've seen on election coverage, The Washington Post declares young voters to be one of the winners of last night's election.
"No age group has been more ridiculed for their lack of participation than those under 30. But in Indiana that age group comprised 16 percent of the overall vote while those 65 or older comprised 15 percent. Under 30s went for Obama 61 percent to 39 percent, a margin that all but neutralized Clinton's 44 percent margin among older Hoosiers."
And those were the ones who were able to vote! The US Supreme Court decided to uphold Indiana's Voter ID law they "rejected arguments that Indiana’s law imposes unjustified burdens on people who are old, poor or members of minority groups and less likely to have driver’s licenses or other acceptable forms of identification."
What was rejected by the Supremes was seen in Tuesday's elections. According to a release by the Student PIRGs
"Student PIRG New Voters Project staff stationed at polling locations near Indiana campuses today are beginning to hear from young voters turned away at the polls for a failure to meet voter identification laws upheld by the Supreme Court last week....
19-year-old Angela Hiss, a sophomore and computer science major at the University of Notre Dame, was turned away from the polls this afternoon, as she attempted to vote in her first election. After arriving at her polling location, she presented several forms of identification - her school ID, a piece of mail that showed her campus address and an Illinois driver’s license – but was misinformed that she could not vote because she could not show in-state ID. Poll-workers, according to Hiss, also did not advise her that she could cast a provisional ballot, as required by state and federal law. Instead, they suggested visiting local Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain the in-state identification required by Indiana’s newly-upheld law...
19-year-old Allyson Miller, a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame and volunteer at a local children’s clinic was similarly turned away from the polls today. An Indiana resident since the age of five, Miller left her driver’s license in her dorm room, and arrived straight from class at the polls with her school ID and registration confirmation papers from the County Registrar. Upon arriving, however, poll-workers did not allow her to vote without a state-issued ID. "I plan to come back because voting is a big deal to me," said Miller, "but it’s a huge inconvenience, especially with a final tomorrow."
19-year-old Becky Jenkins, a sophomore and member of the tennis team at Butler University was also unable to vote in her first election today. "I didn’t know that I had to have an Indiana ID," she said after she was turned away from the polls for attempting to cast her ballot using a driver's licenses issued by the State of Illinois. When asked if she would instead cast a provisional ballot, Jenkins also said her travel plans wouldn’t allow her to."
Similar accounts were heard by elderly nuns who were also prevented from voting
"The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway. One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.
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A new documentary, simply titled Asparagus!, gives us big reasons to care about this one little green stalk. The film focuses a magnifying glass on Oceana County, Michigan, the asparagus capital of the world. Over the course of 53 minutes, we meet many of the residents, family farmers, and farm workers for whom asparagus defines life.
The film brings to life our country’s local asparagus industry, while pulling in issues from the local food movement to free trade to the U.S. war on drugs to the struggle of family farmers in an increasing globalized world. As many documentaries do, Asparagus! sets up a David/Goliath conflict: Oceana County’s asparagus community finds itself under serious threat from foreboding forces of the U.S. government’s war on drugs.
In the early 1990s, the government started using U.S. tax dollars to pay Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus instead of coca. Since then, hundreds of American farms have gone out of business. Not only is imported asparagus cheaper, but it’s available year-round – because Peru’s agricultural conditions allow for year-round growth.
For Oceana County, the impact has been particularly damaging. Many family farms have been forced to shut down. The ones still holding on for dear life struggle to compete with cheap imported asparagus.
Unsurprisingly, the so-called war on drugs initiative has done nothing to curb cocaine production or distribution. As one farmer in the film says, it’s not like coca farmers stopped their growing and switched over to asparagus. And why would they, when the cocaine industry is such a lucrative one, mainly due to high demand from the U.S.?
The film also takes on free trade, depicting small farmers whose lives and livelihoods are being greatly impacted by U.S. foreign trade policy.
But the real appeal of the film is that it’s got heart. As we get to know Oceana’s residents and farmers, hear their stories, and learn about their idiosyncratic love for asparagus, it’s hard not to fall in love with the town. Which also makes it hard not to get onboard with their cause.
Asparagus!, the award-winning “stalk-umentary,” is part of the Media That Matters film festival, and was released in its full length on DVD last week. Watch the trailer here.
The U.S. Supreme Court voted last week that could make it more difficult for Indiana residents to cast a ballot. And due to this ruling, many other states might follow suite. Remember that whole thing about democracy and everyone having the right to vote -- ha! I bet you thought that was real, right?
Rock the Vote released statement calling it "supremely wrong."
Politico has also reported on the topic saying that it hurts young voters.
In CNN's report they talk about the many, many other groups that will face voting difficulties in November as a result including, but not limited to: the poor, the elderly, African Americans, disabled Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, not to mention (and CNN didn't) young voters.
While this decision was only for Indiana, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri all have similar cases pending. Nearly every state has had some kind of ID law proposed in the last few years. As one activist told me we should "look for a lot of legislation to come very quickly on this, in time for November." Currently, some states allow student ID's as a form of verifiable identification, but only for state schools, and unfortunately, many states do not allow this.
I believe this ruling is the most devastating to our country and our rights than any ruling I've seen in my lifetime. I personally am shocked and disgusted in The Court, which leads a country that is supposedly a free society where you don't need a reason to make something legal -- you need a reason to make something illegal.
As the CNN report says, there is no evidence that widespread voter fraud has ever happened or that presenting an ID at the poll would stop this. What the law does do is disenfranchise millions of people and cause considerable problems for Americans who want to vote, but who will most certainly be turned away in November.
In Rock the Vote's latest report one in five young voters do not have the correct address on their driver's licenses leaving them at the mercy of the polling workers to decide if they can vote.
Sen. Russ Feingold is so concerned about this ruling that he has proposed legislation that would nationally allow same day registration or Election Day Registration (EDR) so that people can register under their current information and vote by provisional ballot so that their information is correct and they can still vote. This would essentially allow more people access to voting and to registration but still adhere to the Court's decision requiring identification.
Not surprisingly, the community of voting rights proponents and youth advocates spent the day filling the news will statements.
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Young people aren't always liberals. And the majority didn't always vote for Democrats.
Surprised? No, for real, are you?
The eighties are remembered mostly for its pop culture, but the decade was also famous for Reagan and the expansion of the Republican Party. The plurality of young people in that decade, like other age groups, voted for Reagan and identified with the G.O.P. In other words, the G.O.P. attracted more young voters than the Democratic Party while Reagan was in office.
In 1988, young people helped elect George H.W. Bush into the Oval Office. That was also the last time when more young people voted for the G.O.P. than Democrats.
The next decade was then when the Democrat's began to ride on a wave of youth energy and participation, which was reinforced at the beginning of the new century. Bill Clinton's victory in 1992 was helped in part by the second highest recorded turnout of young people since 1972 -- 52 percent. (pdf)
Even though young people have favored the Democrats since 1992, it hasn't always been by an overwhelming margin; young people were split more evenly in 1998 and 2000. Gore won the plurality of the youth vote in 2000, but only by a 2 percentage-point margin. (pdf)
This was followed by a burst in youth support in 2004; the margin soared to nine percentage points in favor of Kerry. More recently, in the 2006 Congressional house races, 58 percent of young people supported a Democratic Candidate. (pdf) Moreover, the plurality of young voters identified with the Democratic Party, a 12 percentage point advantage over the G.O.P. And even more recently, in the 2008 primary contests, for which we have exit poll data for both parties, roughly three-quarters of all young voters participated in the Democratic primary.
So yes, divisive politics turns out voters -- of all stripes -- and young voters are no different. In 2004 and 2006, young voters came out in larger numbers -- by a greater margin -- than any other age group. The 2008 primary season is no different.
But what is different in this election, isn't just the energy, it's proof that the strategy of reaching out to young voters works. The growing support for Democrats, especially in this primary season, is partly the result of direct and tailored outreach to young people; the GOP is not putting as much effort into recruiting young voters.
Youth outreach matters, as in, it just might win you an election, especially when the Millennials are about to surpass the Baby Boomers generation in numbers. Democrats were the first to recognize this in the 2008 election.
Party affiliation, and more importantly, preferences are not dictated by time and age, but through the strength of the argument made in its case. Progressives have been making their case now for years, and most are not buying into any stereotypes about young voters. This is a movement that is years in the making and still growing.
NCLB in the Classroom: Observations from the Front
Debates about No Child Left Behind (NCLB) often come down to fractures based on perspective. Many of the educators I've met ground their opinions on the law in their experiences in the classroom. To these educators, NCLB's annual testing requirements have turned schools into factories where innovative lessons have been replaced by rote test preparation. Moreover, the annual tests have placed onerous expectations on students, filling some youth with such anxiety that they shut down or disengage from school entirely.
On the other hand, policy makers analyze the law from a perspective that can be characterized generously as a birds-eye view, or cynically, as an ivory-tower view. From their vantage point, requiring regular standardized tests in schools is crucial to ensure that schools are successful in their core purpose of advancing student achievement. Moreover, detailed, thoroughly examined data on how our students are doing within each racial and socioeconomic grouping is absolutely necessary if we want to close down the pernicious achievement gap affecting low-income and students of color.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that for most of my time in the education policy arena, I've fallen squarely in the latter camp. But now that I've taught and gone through a year where standardized testing has been a serious challenge, I am better able to understand the nuances of the debate.
The basic problem boils down to a simple fact: students of all ages and all backgrounds are already not inclined to test-taking. Now, some tests are easier to stomache than others. Tests that are relevant and reasonable are always better than tests that seem arbitrary and unnecessary. Tests that students feel well-prepared for are also more likely to be taken seriously than tests that seem overly difficult.
On both of these fronts in my school this year, however, NCLB-required standardized testing did not fare well with my students. Since passing the tests is not required for grade promotion (which, contrary to popular belief, is usually the case with most of these tests), the students did not see any direct reason to try hard on the tests. Moreover, the tests asked many questions that were inaccessible to the students, particularly on the math and science sections. So students who were already uninspired to try hard on the tests found themselves frustrated with confusing questions.
When that happens, the natural inclination for almost all of my students was to quit trying. There was a lot of random bubble-filling going around my room, and test sections that should have taken an hour only took 15 minutes. And there were a lot of angry students lashing out at teachers and other staff members who they perceived to be the reason why they had to take the seemingly unreasonable tests.
But here's where the rub is. Because the students did not try hard on the test, the data from the tests will not actually be a reliable way to measure our school's success! So the education policy maker's original goal of getting data to evaluate schools will not be met, and the process will only anger children and their teachers in the process. No wonder why there are so many educators who are upset!
Yet to demand that NCLB's testing requirements be shelved also misses the point. Because the real root cause of the controversy over the tests is that many of the students, in my school at least, find them so difficult that they refuse to try. Addressing this root cause problem by demanding an end to standardized tests makes as much sense as a shopping mall getting rid of its security cameras when it finds out that there has been an outbreak of theft.
The solution?
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YM Blog-A-Thon: Life of a Refugee
(Editor's note: Youth Outlook and WireTap are kicking off the third Youth Media Blog-a-thon. This month's topic is money. Check back frequently for updates and feel free to join the discussion.)
Their life as a struggle working to survive
Take in anything they got just to stay alive
Comin' to America for a better day
Still working twice as hard gettin' minimum pay.
Living life through struggles every single day
Hoping that one day it'll be okay
Their life is hard as a refugee
Learning complex things in a new country
Being looked down on cause you're Nobody
White man so high cause he's Somebody
Who Am I? Who are We? The first generation of a refugee. In games, playing Chinese jump-rope with your shoes off. White people in their baseball caps and knee pads. They got it good or do we?
In the streets, Us driving our old busted up wagons. Them, rollin' up in their new Mercedes Benz. In school, Them getting their straight A's and We gettin' B- D's.
In Jobs, Them in their fancy business suits with their collared shirts and ties. Us working at Chinese food and sweat shops in ripped clothes and a T-shirt.
Then in life, our families struggle trying to find a good paying job to support the family. We work as hard as we can to pay rent, insurance, raise family, pay gas, water and electricity bills and trying to get a car for easy transportation. Working 'illegally' just to pay it all off. While They just sit back and not have to worry about a thing. They have food on the 'Family Table' sit and talk to each other, catch up on things with their perfect TV family. While We wake up at 4a.m. coming home at 10 or 11 late at night. Cold food on the couch and not so much of a "Hey, how's your day?"
They're rich, We're poor. They have their business suits and we have ripped jeans and a T-shirt. They have nice houses that they own and their nice parking spaces while We have the rented bottom floor apartment. We sleep and we hear disturbing sounds and wake up with a parking ticket sitting on the window of the car. They have their Albertson's and Ralphs and we have Eddies Jr. Liquor Market.
You sit and think to yourself how good their life is and just wish for a day when you could be like them: rich, smart and white. But, when you sit and listen, you hear the history about how brave Our grandmother was fighting as a Cambodian in the Vietnam War to protect her 12 children. And then you remember April 15th, Cambodian New Year and how you would play powder fight and laugh with your friends, as you lead the traditions. What do they have?
We have history, culture, tradition, background, they have the giant textbooks that make no sense. We come to KGA and learn about our Community how to help better it and to better Ourselves and We find we are Somebody.
So guess what? .... I am Somebody!
I'm the second daughter of a refugee
I live life to the fullest cause they set me
Free, with proper limitations and security
I got history and culture in my Community
So if you listen up close you can learn from me.
Who am I?
Who are You?
and, Who are We?
An immigrant, refugee, yes, I'm Julie ...
Earlier this month, many of us celebrated Record Store Day by visiting local record stores, or possibly mourning the loss of some of those stores. In the last decade, over 3,000 independent record stores have shut down across the country. A new documentary is looking at why record stores are losing their place in American life and what it all means for the music industry as a whole.
I Need That Record!: The Death (Or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store features such musical greats as Chris Frantz of the Talking Heads, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and Ian Mackaye of Fugazi. They're joined by such experts as punk historian Legs McNeil and political theorist Noam Chomsky. Filmmaker Brendan Toller also interviews both small business owners and music label executives.
The film not only explores how technology and the Internet have changed the way we consume music -- with everything from mp3 players to iTunes to music blogs and MySpace to, yes, of course, illegal downloading. It also takes a hard look at how corporate giants like Wal-Mart and Best Buy are pushing small businesses out of the market, how corporate radio dictates what many of us listen to, and how major music labels "squash new ideas" by focusing on the bottom line.
From Toller's I Need That Record! blog:
The music industry has always been a unique marriage of art and commerce, but today commerce has proved to be the ultimate influence. Rather than develop great acts, embrace new technology, offer affordable products; the major labels are more concerned with turning the clocks back to preserve old business models- with only one thing in mind- THE BOTTOM LINE.
Keep the full paid expense accounts and 7 figure incomes. Keep suing fans. Keep shoving bland music down people's throats that will sell x amounts. Keep producing homogenized radio programs that play the same 50 songs. Keep supporting big box businesses that could care less about music; businesses that sell music below list price. Keep screwing the consumers and retailers who love and care about good captivating music. Squash new ideas, new innovations, and new possibilities as the future of recorded music, a commodity that supports the artist, vanishes.
I Need That Record! premiers May 3 (this Saturday) at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. All are welcome to attend the screening.
View the trailer here:
And check out a few more links here:
Young Religious Voters Focus on Social Justice
A new piece from The Associated Press suggests that some young voters of faith will be voting with regard to social justice issues. The piece notes the drastic diversion from the 2000 and 2004 elections, when so-called religious voters turned out in droves for President Bush.
There is "a growing number of other young, left-leaning believers are entering the political arena as campaign aides, lobbyists, grass-root activists and engaged voters. They are trying to expand the focus of faith-based politics beyond the religious right's hot-button issues of abortion and gay marriage. And they are placing social justice issues, like poverty and war, at the intersection of their moral and political decision making...
"In three decades I've never seen this sort of student-youth involvement," said Jim Wallis, author of the best-seller "The Great Awakening." "I do think there's a major shift under way."
The shift of young faith-based voters both dramatic and complex. "They're leaving the Republican Party in droves, but they're not automatically Democrats," Wallis said. "They're not going to jump in the pocket of the Democratic Party the way they did with the Republican Party."
As we've seen in the past, many young people are using their traditional beliefs to extend beyond single-issue candidacies and so-called values campaigns to decide for themselves what the issue du jour is. But these newly-named social values and reborn politics are more slated for the ever-growing Independent Party or "decline to state" voters.
And according to some, that may account for the major calling from faith based voters under 30 who contribute to the success of candidates like Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.
"The message that Barack Obama tends to have definitely appeals to people in my generation, especially people in the faith and justice movement," said Jon Gromek, a 22-year-old organizing associate at Network, a Catholic social justice group based in Washington.
Gromek, who favors Obama, majored in theology and political science and sees his faith-based social work as part of a larger generational shift. "There's a growing movement of people, especially youth, who are ready to work on these issues, whether from a political or social standpoint."
One thing is for certain, these same beliefs are affecting the non-profit organizations across the country. More social justice organizations have developed in the past several years to fight genocide and help children in war-torn areas, not to mention hundreds of domestic-based organizations.
Whether through elections or issue campaigns, giving voice to young values has brought to light issues that campaigns often times lack and I believe our country is all the better for having the dialogue.
Tough Education Choice for Sen. McCain
A great blog called "Education Election" has been running courtesy of the National Education Writers Association at Edelection. It covers news stories in which presidential candidates have discussed education, and adds a good bit of analysis as well.
One intriguing note is that Barack Obama has made news with his positions and proposals for education a total of 37 times since the start of the campaign season, Hillary has been covered 34 times, and John McCain has been covered only 10 times. Though it doesn't mean anything about the content or quality of their views on education, there may be some conclusion that is reachable regarding the priority with which each campaign views education as an election issue.
You don't need to take it from me or the education writers association, however. You can take it from the McCain campaign itself, which has all but admitted that education will not play a major role in his campaign. Indeed, "education" only appeared on the issues section of his website very recently, and he has refrained from virtually any substantive discussion thus far.
Why has the Arizona Senator said so little about schools and school reform? This terrific article by Richard Whitmire on Politico.com explains it well. Basically, McCain has a choice to make. On the one hand, he can do what most GOP nominees have done for the past quarter-century and minimize education as a federal election issue by mostly talking up school choice, empowering parents, and avoiding tougher issues around NCLB and accountability. This is what worked for Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush.
On the other hand, Senator McCain can do what the current President Bush did back in 2000 and 2004, which was to encroach upon traditionally democratic territory by pushing more centrist and aggressive reforms such as charter schools, teacher quality reform, and other ideas that are less appealing to the Republican base but more promising from a student achievement perspective.
Which one will he choose? It looks like the former right now, except for the fact that his chief education advisor is a woman named Lisa Graham Keegan -- a real firecracker who has made major waves as chief of schools in Arizona and as the head of a DC based group called the Education Leaders Council (*full disclosure -- I worked for Ms. Keegan as an intern back in 2001 and was quite impressed with her passion for finding solutions to help children learn*). Arizona is perhaps the premier state in the country when it comes to putting conservative talking points on school reform into action, as it has widely available charter schools, vouchers, and other parent choice mechanisms in play. The results haven't been conclusive however -- one study, at least, has gone so far as to rank Arizona last in K-12 education outcomes.
It will bear watching in the coming months, while the Dems continue to slug it out, whether Sen. McCain sets up an aggressive reform agenda on education, or whether he lets it serve as a back-burner issue to Iraq and national security.
Also, I wanted to leave you with this humorous video from Comedy Central's the Colbert Report that is education-related:
YM Blog-a-thon: Post-College Anxieties
(Editor's note: Youth Outlook and WireTap are kicking off the third Youth Media Blog-a-thon. This month's topic is money. Check back frequently for updates and feel free to join the discussion.)
Few things annoy me more than unsolicited advice.
So it's not surprising that during my senior year of college, I turned a deaf ear to anyone who tried to give their two cents about life post-college. I already knew the horror stories. Me? I was going to be fine. The universe would align itself, I'd fine myself a nice job that didn't assault my soul, great apartment, and my friends and I would visit each other every other month.
Things didn't exactly turn out that way.
While I'm probably the last person who needs to give advice, I'm going to offer my ill-advised, unprofessional opinion based on my not-so-cute encounters with brokeassedness over the past year.
First, a little background:
Recently, a friend and I were talking about how unexpectedly hard knock this post-college existence has been. To put it lightly: it's rough. And not just for spacey cats like myself who majored in impractical things like English. My friend got her degree in Biology, which meant she really studied -- like numbers and shit. Interview after interview, we're learning the truth behind the age-old adage, 'It's not what you know, but whom you know.' Sadly, it rings true both in the corporate and non-profit world's which, for better or worse, are both pretty exclusive. When you don't know the right people, it sucks.
We're not adverse to work in any way. We both had steady full- and part-time jobs while we went to school. But having a degree can sometimes give you a sense of entitlement that's flat out unwarranted.
[Note: These tips come from a very particular kind of college experience. I went to a small liberal arts college in the middle of the Southern California desert. It was like being at Camp -- with a few token people of color thrown in the mix to grace the front of the school catalogue.]
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The League of Pennsylvania Voters
Liz Rincon is the state director for the Pennsylvania League of Young Voters, and while she's only been organizing on the ground for more a few months she's done a lot.
"This was never supposed to happen. I think everyone was unprepared for this because Pennsylvania has never mattered before!" she said over the phone between spirits of answering questions to shouting voices in the background.
The League has worked non-stop for the past several years to energize community members to help engage "sometimes" and "never" voters into participating in the primary elections this year because it helps encourage more consistent voting in the general election as well as other elections.
"It's a catalyst," Rincon said. "There is a lot of excitment this year and a lot of get out the vote, when too often we are ignored. This will really help us, not just this year, but with all elections in the future down to our mayoral elections, even...
The major question is if they [candidates] will come back and holding them accountable for the things they say here. Will they come here and do the town hall [meetings] in the general election? We have to keep people engaged."
Time will tell about the general election, but for now the turnout in Pennsylvania has been substantial. When asked about the campaign activity among the Republican candidates Rincon told me that while The League was non-partisan the GOP was not engaged at all because they didn't have to be. With Republican candidate John McCain as a shoe-in, the democratic candidates had the monopoly on the enthusiasm in the state.
There were some problems reported in voting in PA that one blogger reported the encounters faced by a friend in Pittsburgh, PA:
"New voters were sent cards in the mail with the wrong polling place. Her voting site was a construction area, and she subsequently spent 40 minutes wandering the streets with other would-be voters. Eventually they got the number for campaign headquarters and found the polling area several blocks away."
Another came from someone who emailed friends of mine who said that he recently signed up to vote by the deadline, had a copy of his registration form, and proof that it was received by the necessary authorities before the date, but was not on the voter rolls. Electronic voting problems were also reported in places.
You can view preliminary exit polling via the chart to the right from Mike over at Future Majority. In the end the Hip-Hop Research and Education Fund says that of the 218,923 new voter registration in Pennsylvania since January 2008, 70 percent of new registrants are between 18 and 35 years of age.
According to Jane Flemming Kleeb at Young Voter's PAC
"The youth share of the overall electorate was 3 percent points above the average share for 2004. This number is consistent with the increased turnout in other states and an increased share compared to the last two general elections."
The report from CIRCLE (pdf) shows a 14 percent increase in turnout for voters under 30 and young voters were 12 percent of the total vote share.
HeadCount evolved from an idea that politics and music are inherently intertwined, says co-chair Andy Bernstein. The grassroots group recognized that young people are already getting together and sharing ideas. They’re already organizing around things that they care about, and one of those things is music. It just made good sense to add civic engagement into the mix.
Last week, Concerts4Charity released A Call to Action, a documentary about how the live music community and grassroots organizers came together to form HeadCount, a voter registration group focused on registering young people at concerts and music festivals. Those involved with HeadCount include Phish, Bela Fleck, the Dave Mathews Band, and Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead -- who sits on the organization’s Board of Directors.
Bernstein says when he thinks about political organizing, he hears music. “I always picture music from the 1960s. Social movements to me are often tied to music,” he said. “[We’re] fully recognizing that Woodstock is not the Martin Luther King ‘I Have a Dream’ speech -- and that Jerry Garcia and Gandhi are not to be in the same sentence. I’m not trying to put music in a place it doesn’t deserve to be. But music is an imprint. It’s something that strikes people at a very core emotional level. Something that inspires people and also inspires change.”
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free Tibet
free you
be Tibet
be me
and then
tell me
whom to hate
July 2001, the International Olympic Committee votes to make Beijing ground zero for the 2008 Summer Games.
January 10, 2008, I'm cascading amidst the prayer flags in Upper Dharamsala, McLeod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama's India based government-in-exile.
March 14, 2008, I'm back in the addiction riddled States, Tibetan's willing to take blows as the world's eyes turn to Lhasa.
April 9, 2008, the Olympic torch builds and burns bridges all through San Francisco.
April 11, 2008, the Dalai Lama is on his way to Seattle, and squeezes in a press conference on a layover in Narita, Japan, where reminds the world how compassion works: "We are not anti-Chinese. Right from the beginning, we supported the Olympic Games."
But he also says that when it comes to protestors, no one "has the right to tell them to shut up."
Free Tibet? No doubt.
But it's about more than supporting any one campaign. More than Free Tibet: Free Palestine, Free! Free! Free Palestine! More than Free Mumia: Free All Political Prisoners. It is more than a campaign, it's about alignment. It's about that moment on the dancefloor, when you are so in sync with the music that every dancer around you can't help but to groove harder.
In what way are we all political prisoners?
I am most aligned with global struggles when I am actively aware of the ways I work to liberate my own person. In my case, liberation has everything to do with the daily fight for my life post-incest.
I've organized since I was 15, keynoted Take Back The Night's, emceed Artists Against Rape, and take note, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. But even now, it's still hard to justify dealing with what happened to me. How do I integrate my life's personal campaign with organizing and educating communities?
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Biggie and Puff might have popularized the refrain "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems," but nowadays, millions of Americans find the exact opposite to be true. With skyrocketing gas prices, thousands laid off at jobs, a housing crisis, cuts to school budgets and a costly war, words like "recession" are on the minds of millions. And with no lucrative record deal or Hollywood biopic film, no one's really singing anymore.
For our third virtual event, WireTap and Youth Outlook want to know your story. Our monthly Youth Media Blog-a-thon is set to run from April 23rd to April 30th and the topic is: Money.
Some questions you might want to address in your entry:
• What do you and people you know do to make money, i.e., sell things on eBay, braid hair, babysit, DJ, sell drugs, etc.?
• Do you feel the effects of the national “recession” in your community? What does it look like? What has changed? How are people dealing with it?
• What are your strategies to save money during hard time? What does your family do to cut corners? How do you save money?
• California is cutting $5 billion from the school budget next year, what will this mean for your education system? How does the lack of money affect your school?
• The price of gas is $4 a gallon in some states, how does this affect your life?
• The “recession” is due to the sub-prime mortgage disaster which caused many people to lose their homes, do you know anyone this happened to? Tell us about that.
• Do you know how to go out and have a good time without spending a dime? Write a post advising others how to have fun on the cheap in your city or town.
Past participants include:
Boston Progress Radio (http://www.bprlive.com)
iLL-Literacy (http://www.ill-literacy.com)
The Playground (http://www.jaysplayground.com)
The Cheddar Box(http://www.thecheddarbox.wordpress.com)
Oh Dang! Magazine (http://www.ohdangmag.com)
Youth Radio (http://www.youthradioflows.com)
Girls for Change (http://www.girlsforchange.org)
Edin08 (http://www.edin08.org)
Respect RX (http://www.respectrx.com)
Vanessa Van Petten (http://vanessavanpetten.com)
Kameelah Rasheed (http://kameelahwrites.blogspot.com)
Vanessa Huang (http://graniterainbow.wordpress.com)
Sex Etc. (http://www.sexetc.org)
We want to hear from you! Read, comment and participate! For more information, contact me at Jamilah@wiretapmag.org