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Resurrection of the Cassette Tape?
I blogged a couple months ago about the death of the record store. So I was really intrigued when I read a post on Boing Boing Gadgets about cassettes still being a multi-million dollar industry. In prison.
The Boing Boing post references a NYTimes article about a North Hollywood-based mail-order tape business. Pack Central is a retailer that caters to about 50,000 prisoners. The inventory includes 10,000 CD titles and 5,000 cassette titles.
But as Boing Boing's John Brownlee points out, unlike a CD, "[A] tape can't be broken apart and used as a shiv. Prisoners are allowed to have them."
According to the Times article, current top-selling cassette titles include Mariah Carey's "E=MC2" and Lil Wayne's "Tha Carter III." Evergreen best sellers include Al Green's "Greatest Hits" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller." They might not sound the best on analog, but it's better than prison with no music.
The biggest takeaway point from this story, I think, is that corporate record companies could learn something from Park Central. This small retailer is doing so well because it's opening itself up to an undervalued market. If the recording industry put more resources toward innovative technology and business strategies it wouldn't have to go after so many illegal downloaders.
Calling All Young Bloggers
(Blogging from the annual Netroots Nation conference in Austin, Texas.)
Sunday was the close of the annual Netroots Nation conference, formerly known as YearlyKos. Over 3,000 bloggers, consultants, and curious politicos descended upon Austin, Texas to talk about independent, grassroots media.
At Thursday's Youth Caucus, people spoke about how much older most of the attendees were. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the mistake in her Saturday morning keynote address when she referred to the bloggers in the audience.
The truth is the average age of bloggers is more like the age of your parents, or an ex-hippie who is in retirement and getting involved again. Youth being synonymous with blogging is a misnomer.
Ian Magruder, a young blogger and filmmaker from California agrees, saying:
"Most people outside of the blogosphere have this idea that bloggers are all a bunch of angry young liberals. In actuality, you're average blogger is a well-educated, middle class baby boomer.
The entire concept of blogging or at least political blogging, is still foreign to most Millennials."
Another major component to the demographic of Netroots Nation attendees is cost and accessibility. Most young people can't afford the various levels for ticket prices which begin at $175 and cap off at $400. Add to that the cost of a hotel --anywhere from $70-200 per night -- the cost of food and the fundraisers and parties during the conference, and it's clear why gatherings like these are out of reach for most young bloggers.
Democracy for America worked to help those who couldn't afford to attend by offering 30 scholarships, many of which were to young people. Netroots Nation is going to help with this for the 2009 conference and provide student rates.
Most young people may not call themselves political bloggers, but the prevalence of personal blogs written on Facebook, Myspace and Blogger shows that young people approach blogging differently than their older counterparts. For instance, Kevin Bondelli, a new media consultant and youth politics expert, believes there's a generational cultural preference:
"Blogging is not as exciting a tool for Millennials as it is for older generations. Social networking and other very quick tools for sharing themselves trump the blog as a form of expression. The older generation has never been able to express themselves to an audience before, yet are not entirely comfortable with this next step that Millennials have taken. For older generations, blogging is the new pamphleteering. I also think that the older generation writes more for the sake of writing where Millennials are writing for their friends."
When asked how bloggers can recruit more young bloggers they all agreed it was the million dollar question. It seems like a natural place for young people. Millennials are active, involved, and they know where they are on issues. They've got a better grasp on technology than any generation before them. Yet the struggle is figuring out how to include them in the larger political blogosphere.
National Hip Hop Political Convention Opens in 2 Weeks
(This post originally appeared on Vibe.com and on Jeff's blog, Can't Stop Won't Stop.)
Since the first National Hip-Hop Political Convention was held in Newark New Jersey in the summer of 2004, young voters have come to the polls in big turnouts, driven by a landmark surge of young voters of color. This surprised many long-time political observers, but not the organizers of the Convention--full disclosure: I was there--who had seen the growth of hip-hop activism and organizing around the country.
After the Convention, those efforts continued around the country, joined by high-profile voter registration campaigns by Diddy and Russell Simmons. Those efforts continue today. Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network has taken Hip-Hop Team Vote to a number of campuses. T.I. is joining the Hip-Hop Caucus's efforts to register and turn out young people to vote in 12 target states, including swing states like Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio.
When the third National Hip-Hop Political Convention opens in Las Vegas on July 30th--in the heart of another swing state, Nevada--it can boast of its role in expanding the field of hip-hop generation elected officials and candidates, including co-founder Rosa Clemente who will be addressing the body as the Green Party vice presidential candidate. Representatives of the Democratic and Republican National Committees will also be speaking. The focus will be the Convention's political agenda, first forged in Newark in 2004.
2008 Convention Chair Troy Nkrumah took time away from a heavy load of emails, text messages, and phone calls to talk with Vibe.com about the importance of the Convention and its agenda, and what role it hopes to play in this historic election and beyond.
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Hip-Hop Leaders: Jesse Jackson's Time Is Up
(Via RaceWire:)
Kevin Powell and Nas both think that it’s time for a guard change among Black political leaders. Calling it a generational shift made most noticeable by the success of Barack Obama’s message within the Hip Hop generation, both men think they are members of this next wave of leaders to take the torch from older Civil Rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Kevin Powell is a writer and activist, known to some for his early 90s appearance on the first season of The Real World, who is running for Congress in Brooklyn. Nas, born and raised in Queens, is arguably one of the greatest emcees in the history of hip-hop who is has been stirring up lots of controversy leading up to his latest album, Untitled (formerly the N word).
Powell says:
I certainly acknowledge and appreciate what the Civil Righters have done, but we younger African Americans are saying now, loudly, the jig is up and it is time for you to go, especially if you have not created hope and plans of action for our communities. The days of marching and protesting without a clear purpose are over. The days of voting for someone just because they are Black are over. Indeed, the multicultural legion of young Americans who've flocked to Obama's campaign suggest that we want leadership that builds bridges, not be stuck in the rhetoric and realities of the past. I have witnessed this as I've been campaigning. Yes, I must represent the concerns of Blacks and Latinos in East New York. But I cannot ignore the Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg or the young White professionals in Fort Greene. They are all my people. Until we have Black leaders who understand that the America we need now is one where an Obama can be president and a Nas can make a rap song like "Black President," both condemning Obama doubters and reminding everyone of the inequities that still exist, then we will continue to have leadership that is operating as if it is 1968 instead of 2008.
Nas seems to echo Powell's sentiment, and he says that he and other rappers have already begun taking their place within this changing Black political heirarchy (Listen to audio):
Hip Hop's leaders are definitely riding the wave of momentum created by Barack Obama's campaign, and they want their turn at the mic. Do you think Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should "grab nuts" and be out?
Hipster Racism
(Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Racialicious, and was updated on AJ's blog The Cruel Secretary.)
By now, you've seen the latest New Yorker cover, with the Obamas garbed in the gear of the latest fear-mongering Americans' wet dream.
Of course, people at Michelle Obama Watch, Daily Kos, Politico, and other blogs have expressed rightful and righteous outrage over the cover.
The Washington Post's and CNN's Reliable Sources' Howard Kurtz said: "I talked to the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, who tells me this is a satire, that they are making fun of all the rumors," Kurtz added. (Source)
Bill Burton, The Obama campaign spokesperson, responded: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree." (Source)
My current live-in partner, who works at the New Yorker, just couldn't believe that so many people responded so angrily at the cover at the Daily Kos and other sites. He "wanted to see [my] reaction." When I emphatically told him that I didn't find it funny, he said, "You're so angry."
"Of course I'm angry. What do you expect? This is my reaction is to your employer doing something so racist." "I'm trying to have some fun here."
Humph, you gotta love hipster racism.
I define hipster racism (I'm borrowing the phrase from Carmen Van Kerckhove) as ideas, speech, and action meant to denigrate another's person race or ethnicity under the guise of being urbane, witty (meaning "ironic" nowadays), educated, liberal, and/or trendy. This racist and sexist balderdash that's the New Yorker cover fits squarely into that definition. So, honestly, does the behavior of my partner, who prides himself on coming from a California family of educators who taught him to be colorblind and on working at a magazine renown for being, well, urbane, witty, educated, liberal, and trendy yet likes to view me as the Angry Negress.
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The Case for Genocide
On Monday, July 14 Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court that could lead to international sanctions against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
"would make al-Bashir the first sitting president to be indicted by the ICC for genocide...
A senior official in Sudan's security apparatus Sunday called the possible prosecution a "catastrophe," a "big mistake."
"Definitely, the rebels will try to capitalize on this," the official said. "No one will talk about the peace process anymore.
"What do you expect the rebels to say if the president is indicted? [They] will say, 'Let us see what happens before we enter into any serious negotiations,'" the official added. "So it produces a stalemate."
The United Nations has called Darfur "the scene of the world's largest humanitarian operation for the past three years... 4 million people in the Darfur region rely on humanitarian assistance."
The Save Darfur Coalition has been one of the most outspoken American-based groups to partner with university campuses and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to speak out against the genocide. The organization is one of the many that has worked to help those victimized in the region.
Save Darfur has also been a leader in the push to get companies to divest from the war-torn region. This has been particularly important to college students who have urged their school administrations to divest from Susan.
Jerry Fowler, Safe Darfur's Executive Director, welcomed the news of potential ICC sanctions. He also suggested that the news highlights the failure of previous inaction by the United States Security Council, saying:
"The world at-large, primarily the Security Council, has allowed al-Bashir to continue his reign of destruction, recalcitrance and violence with utter impunity. These pending charges must now sober al-Bashir’s international apologists who continue to shield and protect the Khartoum regime from meaningful measures with meaningful consequences."
Today's news comes just one week after seven peacekeepers were killed in Sudan. According to the International Herald Tribune:
"The attack... was reported by the UN officials Wednesday, was the deadliest on international forces in Darfur since September 2007, when 10 peacekeepers were killed in an assault on a base..."
Many activists on the Save Darfur Facebook Fan Page mark this as a huge step forward.
To hear prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo discuss the charges, listen to his interview with BBC World News.
Can We Talk?
I've been thinking a lot about the magnitude of these elections, and I have decided that the one person worthy of leading this great country is…Condoleezza Rice. Sure she's an enabler for warmongering megalomaniacs and the architect of one of the most embarrassing, destructive regimes in United States history. We are probably opposites on every important issue at stake. But, I don't really care about silly things like ideologies. I'd throw every belief out the window to get Condi in the White House. Looks are what count, specifically, how much a person looks like me. Unlike the guy stumping in for the Democrats, Ms. Rice is not only Black, she's a woman too! It's a win-win situation, right?
Just kidding. Like most people, basic intelligence and a sense of responsibility inform my decisions, not demographics. If you missed my sarcasm, I won't hold it against you. The opinions of Black women have routinely gone unnoticed in the media's election coverage.
Which brings me to a question that has been bothering me: In an otherwise boisterous election, why have African American women been so silent?
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Trekking Through the Life of a Guide
I'm sitting at a tiny, dark, and dingy café tucked away in the busy streets of Kathmandu, having milky Nepali tea with Ang Sherpa, a 24-year-old young man who guides tourists through the tortuous terrain of Nepal's soaring Himalayas and captivating hills. If you've ever been to Nepal, you'll have seen tenderly young Nepali child laborers. Yet Ang, who does not 'look' disadvantaged and is older, tells me a story mixed with politics, economic insecurity, and familial obligations that most tourists would never know unless they asked. At an age when most in the US are expected to 'invest' in their future by attending college, for Ang, working is investing in not only his future, but that of everyone else in his family.
Ang, who is a Sherpa (a Himalayan ethnic group which is prominent in high expedition trekking), is the second oldest of eight children. Along with two of his brothers who have been working in Dubai and Saudi Arabia for the past three years like thousands of other Nepali migrant laborers, all three work full-time to support their unemployed, 52-year-old parents and a Buddhist monk brother. They also pay the private school fees of their two younger sisters, their brother's English and tourism classes, and an ex-Buddhist monk brother's English language classes. Ang works as a full-time trekking guide, an industry that compromises 8 percent of Nepal's Gross Domestic Product, though it is certainly not a steady income throughout the year, because trekking seasons runs from September to May-after and before the monsoon season. . During the off-season, Ang doesn't work because jobs are hard to come by: the unemployment rate is estimated to be at least 42 percent, and young people are particularly hit hard since 38 percent of the working age population is composed of youths.
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Gang Injunction Approved in Southern California
(Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Luis Rodriguez's blog.)
As expected, and despite opposition from a number of community leaders, a gang injunction against the San Fer gang has been imposed by the courts on a nine-and-a-half square mile area of the Northeast San Fernando Valley, encompassing most of Sylmar, a northwest portion of Pacoima and all of San Fernando City (most of the rest of Pacoima has already been under a gang injunction for years against the Pacoima Flats, Projects Boys, and other Pacoima gangs).
This is reportedly the largest gang injunction area in Los Angeles
Already, young Latino men I know -- not in gangs -- have been stopped, arrested, and in one case almost photographed (to be part of a statewide gang data base). This last case was stopped when the young man's parents became involved and demanded their son not be photographed or placed on this data base. Finding that this young man had no gang ties, he was eventually released.
As I predicted, many youth not in San Fer, but also alleged San Fer members not involved in crimes, will be harassed and even arrested. Our juvenile facilities, jails and prisons are teeming with youth who shouldn't be there -- a gang injunction makes illegal what is otherwise legal activity: association, using a cell phone, or having tattoos. Now alleged gang members will find themselves going to jail for things that are not criminal.
If you make more laws, you make more lawless.
My work, and the work of many gang intervention workers, is to keep these young people out of the criminal justice system. Our work now has become twice as hard as these injunctions -- and other laws down the pike like the Runner Initiative slated for vote in November -- end up placing poor and often neglected youth behind bars faster and longer.
It's easy now to end up in jail -- it's harder to find treatment, help, jobs, schooling, viable alternatives to street life.
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Bold Education Ideas for Senators McCain and Obama
News yesterday from the presidential campaign trail was that Senator McCain was preparing to give an address before the NAACP next week discussing his plans for how the federal government can help improve public education outcomes in America. While his talk, even by his own campaign's admission, is unlikely to be as deep and detailed as Senator Obama's parallel speech on education more than a month ago, word is that he will discuss No Child Left Behind and a handful of more intricate issues such as teacher pay-for-performance.
The fact that none of the presidential candidates have been so measured in their approaches on education -- even Senator Obama's 19-minute address six weeks ago did not contain any headliners -- indicates that they have both bought into the current orthodoxy of education reform in Washington, DC: the standards-based accountability movement. This is the movement that has resulted in states setting standards for what students should know in each subject area by each grade level, and implementing testing systems to measure whether those standards are being met.
In principle, the standards based accountability movement is a sound strategy that owes much of its genesis to successful business practices designed to monitor and enhance productivity. But unlike the business world, where workers rarely object to the idea that they will be held to a set of performance indicators to determine their efficacy, we have seen a fair deal of back-lash from educators and other stakeholder groups against the standards based model in education, particularly on the testing front.
I have often been quick to play devil's advocate against this brand of backlash, asserting the general logic that anytime an institution is suddenly and openly confronted with its own failures (and in the institution of public education, the magnitude of those failures is immense indeed), that the institutional stakeholders will reject and rail against the accountability system that reveals its weaknesses. But it must also be admitted that there is some degree of resonance to what those who object to NCLB and standards-based school reform are saying. The appeal of their arguments can be described this way: is the end goal and sum-total of what we are trying to achieve in public education reform really just an increase in the number of students who correctly fill-in some arbitrary percentage of bubbles on an annual test?
To be sure, those bubbles, the arbitrary percentage, and the tests themselves represent real skills that are indicators of what our children need to know to compete in the world economy. But that's also the problem: they are only indicators. If Susie Q. passes her state-written 4th grade reading proficiency test she still has a ways to go before she has earned her way into a prosperous participation in the global economy.
None of this would be a problem if we didn't have better indicators. That is to say, most people agree that institutions, whether public or private, ought to be held accountable to meeting their stated purposes, and we should use the bets-tailored indicators possible to decide if they are in fact succeeding. But in the case of public education, I believe we do have better indicators to determine whether our schools are meeting the goal of preparing all youth for productive future lives as democratic citizens and members of an ever-changing global work force: college completion rates and, by extension, high school drop-out rates!
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Mideast Youth Takes On Afghan Media
Last year, we profiled Mideast Youth, an independent blogging network dedicated to eliminating extremism from the Middle East and North Africa. I thought I'd check back in with the group to see what they've been up to. Sure enough, they've been busy as ever. But their new project is both fascinating and really cool.
Mideast Youth has launched Afghan Press, a blog whose purpose is to "use digital media to show the world what currently goes unreported" in Afghanistan. The journalist-activists who started Afghan Press want to cover daily events in remote villages and interview locals -- everyday people -- who are never represented in the media. And they hope to do this using all different forms of media.
Afghan Press has also become a place to announce journalism training opportunities for Afghan journalists. In this way, Mideast Youth hopes to contribute something to Afghanistan's media.
From the Afghan Press mission statement:
Afghanistan is a country riddled with poverty, illiteracy, censorship, human rights abuses and corruption. There are hardly any progressive and independent news sources functioning within it. We aim to change that!
We want to create a powerful Afghanistan through new media technologies. The internet is our only gateway to free speech and global outreach...It is time for Afghanistan to have a successful digital media outlet that is by the people, for the people, to the world and whose mission is to improve the country.
War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims
Who are the Muslims in our midst? Terrorists? Existential threats to Western civilization? Sworn enemies of America?
These questions – rehearsed and scripted much like the answers – were rolled off the assembly line at a furious clip when America decided to wage war on two Muslim countries in the aftermath of September 11th.
Rarely have Muslims been invited to partake in this denunciation masquerading as discussion—except, of course, those polished ex-Muslims eager to denounce their former coreligionists carte blanche, accruing handsome benefits for themselves in the process.
War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims is a book which challenges the conventional and tiresome rhetoric aimed at Muslims—specifically, at the more than four million Americans who call Islam their faith.
Written by Melody Moezzi, a writer and lawyer who describes herself as “a thinking, feeling, educated and stubborn Muslim Iranian American woman,” the book does not address anti-Muslim prejudice through erudite exegesis. Rather, following the journalistic maxim of “show, don’t tell,” it engages the reader by presenting slices of 12 young Muslim American lives, including the author’s own, in accessible prose.
Moezzi presents us with a multiplicity of stories, including that of two Americans who convert to Islam despite ubiquitous domestic depictions of Muslims as fanatics; a young woman from Iran whose parents fled at the eve of the war with Iraq; a young man with an Egyptian father, Korean mother, and a penchant for rapping; a Bosnian war refugee turned legal advocate; a Wall Street Journal reporter close to the slain journalist Daniel Pearl; and a founder of a Muslim organization who braved death threats to serve the LGBTQ community.
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Community Stunned by Murder of Young Activist
An amazing activist in Lawrence, Kansas was murdered this week by her ex-boyfriend. Jana Mackey was a 25-year-old law student. After a short time working for political campaigns and serving as one of the youngest lobbyists at the Kansas State House, her life was cut tragically short.
A friend of Mackey's posted on a blog about her shock and disbelief:
"The last time I saw her was almost a week ago at Henry's - as lively person I can imagine. Its still not quite sinking in that the most alive person I know is not..."
According to a blog post by a friend and colleague of Mackey's:
" She defended women, women's rights, and the access to health care not to mention the dozens of other local issues that she was so passionate about.
In 2006 it was easy to know who I needed at my side when starting another campaign. I begged her to be my deputy campaign manager and help keep me organized and help me build relationships with some of the people she'd known at the Capital that previous session....
I remember trying to talk her out of going to law school and telling her how important it was to have people like her out there helping to save the world. She promised she would still work to save the world with me, but said that she was going to do it from a different vantage point."
Mackey also served as a lobbyist for the Kansas Equality Coalition. In an emailed statement, former Executive Director Tiffany Muller said:
"I remember the very first week of the 2005 session walking into the Capitol and meeting Jana for the first time. She was one of the youngest lobbyists (if not the youngest lobbyist) there, but she quickly made herself a "go to" person. She was so friendly and outgoing and motivated and was always ready to help do what was needed."
This dear friend and remarkable activist will most be remembered as an Advocate with local domestic violence organizations. Sarah Jane Rusell, Executive Director of Ga Du Gi Safe Center where Mackey worked, says:
"Advocates are people who are on call 24/7 ... they do the front-line work with victims; they’re the ones who have heart. It takes a heart, and it takes being honey on steel, and she had that ... she had everything, and above all she had compassion for others."
In a tragic case like this, Jana would want me to remind everyone that domestic violence is a too often forgotten plague on our culture. Young women are particularly susceptible to abuse according to the Family Violence Prevention Fund.
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Trick or Vote: The Best Way on the Best Day
(Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Future Majority.)
Pop Quiz Time:
1.What is the single most effective way to mobilize voters?
a) Visibilities
b) Sitting on a couch and bitching
c) Talking to 'em face-to-face
2.What holiday always immediately precedes Election Day and has a built-in tradition of door-knocking?
a) Halloween
b) The 4th of July
c) Festivus
3.What does everyone love?
a) Rick Rolling
b) Costumes!
c) Voting
d) All of the above
All of us who work in the field of youth engagement face big competition. The biggest competition we face - for volunteers, for attention - is not from one another's organizations either. It's from the Wii (which is sweet) and the bar scene and friends and loved ones. Our biggest challenge is overcoming that noise and building a politics that is fun and exciting and relevant to people's lives.
That's what makes Trick or VoteTM so freaking sweet. It's the Best Way on the Best Day. It's actually such a sweet idea it doesn't even really need an explanation. But here it is in a nutshell: Get some people who are a bit too old to trick or treat (go as young as high school and as old as the retirement home for your recruitment), rally 'em in costume, meet in a centralized location, train these folks to canvass effectively, and knock some doors. In short, we combine a cultural more (knock doors on Halloween) with hard-minded political research (knocking doors is an effective voter mobilization tool). The result?
•More volunteers. In Portland in 2004, 850 canvassers assembled for the largest mass canvass in the history of the state. By all accounts, this year will be even bigger.
•More virgin volunteers. Out of that same crowd in Portland, more than one-in-three were first-time political volunteers who came out of the woodwork for a program well-suited to help our fellow citizens lose their voter virginity.
•More conversations. On Halloween evening, people are home - either waiting for trick-or-treaters or getting ready for their parties. They're even prepared to open the door. And they're definitely ready to engage in a conversation. All of which means that we don't just hit more doors, we hit more doors in a more effective manner.
•More voters. Do the math -- more canvassers, more conversations, and more doors? More people are hitting the polls. The Bus Federation wants to take Trick or VoteTM national this year - and we can do it with your help.
If you're part of a local or national organization that is serious about doing Trick or VoteTM, get in touch soon so we can coordinate our efforts. Contact Alex Aronson at the Oregon Bus Project @ 503-233-3018. Just looking for a project for the fall and think you could pull off a kick-ass Trick or Vote in your hometown? Or even just want to assemble 15 of your closest friends and friends-of-friends and friendly-friends-of-friends'-friends and go hit some doors? Drop us a line. I swear to you, you'll be glad you did.
Major props, by the way, to our friends at the Bus for this innovative program -- Trick or Vote is their brainchild.
Answers to the pop quiz: 1-b, 2-c, 3-a
Jesus for President
The Jesus for President has been flying under the radar for the past several months until they recently caught up with a CNN reporter, curious about their campaign efforts.
Shane Claiborne, co-author and campaign manager for "Jesus for President" describes past experiences with his faith trying to understand the differences between being a believer and a doer. Believers, he explains at a speaking engagement, are the folks who have been messaged to death with the concept of believing, but rarely do churches focus on how to turn that belief into action.
"This whole project is about the political imagination of what it means to follow after Jesus," Claiborne said. "The language of Jesus as Lord and savior is just as radical as it would be to say 'Jesus as our commander-in-chief' today."
"Young evangelicals represent an important swing-voting bloc. They're not a lock for Republicans as their parents were. Their feet are firmly planted on issues dear to both parties. Traditional family values are, as they have been in the past, an important issue," the CNN piece says.
This information isn't new, I've reported on it here, and here and here. But the distribution of the message is a new one. Claiborne is taking his message to young people of faith in true evangelical style for the 21st Century.
According to the CNN piece, the meetings are met with curious and disaffected faith based voters who are backing away from the Republican leadership.
"There were voters from across the board: Republicans, Democrats and independents. Most were young, Christian by background, evangelical in theology, and they say they're hungry for something more than partisan politics.
Steph Walker and Amanda Widing had to settle for seats in the back.
"I would say that social justice and issues like that have definitely arisen as an important part of my faith and, because of that, it affects how I vote and think of those things definitely," said 21-year-old Walker."
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