I hadn't planned on voting today. But I did.
GOTV
by Chitown Kev
I voted this morning.
Since I live considerably north of Howard Street, I did not vote where "the real action" is. My (very small) election slate consisted of school board and community college board -stuff.
Since I knew nothing of the positions of anyone on the election slate, I did about 5-10 minutes of online research and checked out the positions of the slated candidates and went to vote.
I am slightly acquainted with one of the persons on today’s election slate (and yes, I voted for her).
I was in and out of the polling place in roughly five minutes.
I have been of voting age for roughly 30 years and I cannot recall a time when it took me longer than 15 minutes to vote (measured from the time I walk in the voting venue to when I walk back outside).
I’ve rarely even been asked to show any ID other than a voter registration card, which is double-checked and reconciled with the voting books.
I can't imagine what it's like to stand in a line for hours on end simply to exercise my right to cast a vote.
I have never experienced anything like this. And I'm not planning on it.
Usually, I cast a side-eye at any number of ballot items.
However, after having temped at a textbook publisher some years ago and having seen, up close, some of the insane demands of the various Texas schoolboards, I remembered that one of the reasons for the textbook controversies is because right wingers ran for and won seats on these schoolboards over a period of time.
And now the entire country and generations of schoolkids in and beyond Texas are living with the results.
So even though I live in one of the most liberal cities in the country (so much so, that it's been said that I live within a liberal bubble), I've seen more than enough evidence the the right wing politicians never, ever stop or surrender at any level.
I have, at times, been cavalier about my right to vote.
I did not vote in the 1996 presidential election.
I've stated several times that I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 (in Illinois, mind you, the Shrub had no chance of winning Illinois...at least according to the polls).
However the right wing has been in overdrive since November 4, 2008 when my then-United States Senator, Barack Hussein Obama, was elected as the 44th President of the United States of America.
So even though I live in a "liberal bubble," I can't afford to take anything for granted be it a presidential election or an election for dog catcher.
So in spite of my more than occasional cynicism about the the world and especially about politics, I got out and voted today.
And if there is any election where you are living, then so should you.
Because "the real action" is wherever you are.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Ever since 1920s music marketers categorized some records as race records and others hillbilly music, American music has been constructed around race. The New Republic: Why "Indie" Music Is So Unbearably White.
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But the fact that "rock" can be code for "white" suggests that genre whiteness is not just a matter of discouraging artists of color. Genres like rock and indie are for many people defined by whiteness—that is, white skin becomes the genre marker, rather than the music itself. There are few artists of color in the indie scene because artists of color who make what could be called "indie music" get classified as something else.
This is true of Kanye himself. Yeezus, his most recent album, is a swaggering left-field electronica soundscape with hip hop elements. So was Beck's major-label debut, Mellow Gold. The latter is considered an indie classic (even then, in 1994, "indie" was no longer define by whether the music was put out by an independent label). Kanye's album is considered a hip-hop classic, or pop classic, or electronic classic—anything but an indie classic.
The whole hipster R&B genre, aka "PBR&B," seems designed to avoid labeling black artists as "indie." Performers like SZA, FKA Twigs, or Dawn Richard all work with spacious, off-kilter beats and psychedelic electronica flourishes—they sound like peers of Bjork, not Beyoncé. But Bjork is considered central to indie, and SZA, FKA Twigs, and Richard are all R&B with an asterisk. Or consider Valerie June, a guitar-based performer who works with an eclectic variety of roots sources in contemporary idiosyncratic settings. She's not so different from the Dirty Projectors or Vampire Weekend, but June is classified as blues or roots music. The color of her skin means that she's invisible to, and as, indie.
There are exceptions, of course. Sahim cites M.I.A. as the rare POC in indie, and there certainly have been black rock artists, like Jimi Hendrix. Genres are amorphous and porous categories; they aren't determined by any one characteristic, but by what sci-fi scholar John Rieder calls a "web of resemblances." So a black performer like Charley Pride can be a country artist through choice of repertoire, collaborators, venues—a range of markers which signal "country." But none of that changes the fact that one important, and often central, way that people are sorted into the country genre is by skin color. In a 2008 essay, scholar Geoff Mann argued that in many ways the purpose of country was to "recruit white people to their 'whiteness.'" White people aren't the only ones who perform country, or indie, or rock. But country and rock and indie are still iconically white—both because the default, stereotypical performer is white, and because default, stereotypical whiteness is in part defined by those genres.
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Grief in Kenya after Al Shabab, the Somali Islamist extremist group, stormed a university campus and killed nearly 150 students in Kenya’s worst terrorist attack since the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy. New York Times: Kenyans Identify Relatives Killed at College.
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They gathered in the hundreds outside the Chiroma Funeral Parlor, a morgue where the bodies of their loved ones had been brought. Some sat waiting for their turn to go inside, while others stood in a long line. Their faces went pale and their eyes teared up every time someone re-emerged wailing, weeping or being carried.
“Why?” one man cried, moving his hands up and down, as Kenya Red Cross workers held him by both arms and took him to a tent to meet a counselor.
Scores of families were waiting at the morgue on Saturday to identify relatives who died on Thursday when armed men belonging to the Shabab, the Somali Islamist extremist group, stormed a university campus and killed nearly 150 students in Kenya’s worst terrorist attack since the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy in Nairobi.
Global leaders have condemned the attack, including the pope and President Obama.
Mr. Obama called President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya on Friday to express condolences and emphasize his support for the country in the aftermath of what the White House called “despicable attacks.” Mr. Obama reassured Mr. Kenyatta that he still planned to visit Nairobi in July on his first trip to his father’s homeland since taking office.
A Salvation Army officer prayed on Saturday for relatives of those killed in Thursday’s attack at Garissa University College. Credit Will Swanson for The New York Times
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Exchanges aren’t helping African farmers as foreign backers hoped. BusinessWeek: Trading Floors Can’t Feed Africa.
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Mondelez International’s February announcement that it would increase production of coffee from Ethiopian beans 50 percent in two years was good news for the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, started in 2008 with the help of foreign donors to improve food distribution in a country where millions often went hungry. By government decree, almost all buying and selling of coffee, sesame seeds, and navy beans for export must take place on the exchange.
The ECX , which got funding from the U.S. and the United Nations among others, is one of at least eight commodity exchanges started in sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades with the aim of improving food security for local populations. Many have failed, and only South Africa’s is thriving without government support. Exchanges are a distraction from other initiatives that would better serve poor farmers, says Nicholas Sitko, a Michigan State University agricultural economist who’s based in Zambia, where a commodity exchange closed in 2012. “We’ve learned that no amount of money pumped into them and no amount of government effort to get them off the ground can force them to work,” he says.
With its buyers and sellers in colored jackets and open-outcry trading floor displaying real-time market data from around the world, the ECX has been a prime example of what an exchange can and can’t do. The government ordered export coffee trading onto the exchange shortly after it opened, hoping it would jump-start activity and help attract other business. That didn’t work: Small amounts of corn and wheat are traded, but coffee and sesame seeds account for about 90 percent of exchange volume.
Ethiopia Commodity Exchange trading floor. Picture: Pete Lewis
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In Jamaica, whether the races feature Usain Bolt or a group of teenagers, running is a national obsession. New York Times: Track’s Heartbeat Is Fast as Ever in Jamaica.
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Sound rises like a cliff wall — drums, trombones, trumpets, the ubiquitous vuvuzela, the odd French horn and 10,000 fans screaming.
On the blue track below, 15-year-old boys have shot out of the blocks for the 400 meters, postures erect, arms slicing through the tropical air like knives. Faster, faster, they curl around the track as if astride that wave of sound.
This is the high school competition known as Champs, in which long-limbed schoolchildren from valleys and fishing villages and industrial cities descend on this capital city. For five days, they lay down astonishing times, often only a few ticks off world records.
For this track-obsessed island nation — its sprinters won four events at the London Olympics in 2012 — even a 400-meter preliminary counts as a moment to immediately find a television set. Three days later, for the finale, the cement bowl of a stadium will be packed with 33,000 fans, all but levitating.
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Competitors in the 100 meters late last month at the celebrated five-day high school competition in Jamaica known as Champs.
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The statistics speak for themselves. TheGrio: More protections needed to reduce payday lending’s crippling effect on African-Americans.
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When the President traveled back to Alabama last week, he continued drawing attention to the concerns of the middle class and working Americans, this time focusing on the needs of consumers trapped by debt that threatens their ability to prosper. Those debt burdens often affect communities that face the greatest economic hardships; and quite often, they are communities of color.
The statistics speak for themselves. For example, according to a study by The Pew Charitable Trusts, twelve percent of African-Americans have taken out a payday loan, compared to six percent of Hispanics and four percent of whites. Many payday loans trap borrowers in a cycle of debt; eighty percent are rolled over or followed by another loan within fourteen days.
But the disparities don’t stop there. When purchasing a car, borrowers of color receive worse pricing and are nearly twice as likely to be sold multiple add-on products. The statistics for mortgage lending are equally as troubling. Academic studies routinely find evidence of higher pricing for blacks and Hispanics in the mortgage market, which in turn challenges their opportunities for wealth building.
The President and First Lady have often been candid about the challenges they faced to repay their student loans, which they only paid off in 2004. They are not alone; more than four out of five African-American college graduates have to borrow to pay for college and carry nearly 15 percent more debt than their peers.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
The time it takes to blink an eye is the time it takes to roll back the clock to segregated lunch counters and strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree. Time is truly, that fluid. How can we give up when there is still so much work to do and so many people in need? How can we give up on a whole region when that region is populated by those who have struggled so mightily?
We just cannot give up, we just cannot turn our backs. We cannot stop when the struggle is only...
Midway
I've come this far to freedom and I won't turn back
I'm climbing to the highway from my old dirt track
I'm coming and I'm going
And I'm stretching and I'm growing
And I'll reap what I've been sowing or my skin's not black
I've prayed and slaved and waited and I've sung my song
You've bled me and you've starved me but I've still grown strong
You've lashed me and you've treed me
And you've everything but freed me
But in time you'll know you need me and it won't be long.
I've seen the daylight breaking high above the bough
I've found my destination and I've made my vow;
so whether you abhor me
Or deride me or ignore me
Mighty mountains loom before me and I won't stop now.
-- Naomi Long Madgett
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