Daily Kos writer and activist TheFatLadySings has taken the initiative to apply for a Pepsi Challenge grant to help close the gap between those who can easily access internet, get noticed on blogs and attend activism conventions and those with no such opportunities, and everyone should help with this campaign - it will bring more people of color to Netroots Nation 2012 and it will help to make our convention a little more like the makeup of the Democratic Party constituency.
All it takes is a minute to sign up - it's a really easy process. You'll get one email a day reminding you to vote every day and then when voting is over you'll stop getting emails.
Raven Brooks, the executive director of Netroots Nation has offered to assist in this effort and tells us:
"The key to winning the Pepsi Refresh grant is accumulating daily voters. Netroots Nation has agreed to help us organize to win this grant. Sign up at this link to receive an email once a day providing you links to vote. Once the contest is over, win or lose, the email list will be deleted and your email won't be shared with anyone. So please help us recruit all the daily voters you can, and we can do this."
Netroots Nation 2010 in Las Vegas was the first Netroots convention - the first convention ever, really - that I was able to attend. I'm stuck in a tiny town - Loxley, Alabama, where there are only about 1,300 people - in rural south Alabama. I don't get out much, because there's simply not a lot to do - I'm surrounded by fields and a farmers' market and it's quite a drive before I would reach anything resembling civilization. Add to that the fact that I'm in a wheelchair - and it becomes obvious there isn't much of an opportunity for me to thrive in my situation. I'm lucky enough to have a computer and internet - which I can barely afford some months anyway.
I am lucky to have been in a position to post things to the internet that have attracted some notice and I'm lucky to have started writing in a community that showed me a lot of respect over the years; and with my issues, it's been a struggle to understand that I sometimes deserve the compliments and respect - when so many people who are probably better or at least just as good and deserving as I am simply don't have the options I've been given.
I was only able to attend Netroots Nation in 2010 because I happened to win a scholarship from Democracy For America that I'd applied for on a whim, never seriously thinking I would win it. Then, I was only able to attend in 2011 because this community helped me pay for it. I was only able to keep writing because of this community - a donation drive two of my friends here did for me helped me purchase a working computer as well as attend the convention. If we're not all helping each other - if we're not all in this together - then people like me, people in an even worse situation than I am, facing racial barriers and lack of income and worse, will not get their voices seen or heard. So many activists and writers have so many valuable stories and new ways of thinking about politics and activism, and we should do everything we can to make sure they are heard and are visible at Netroots Nation.
I didn't see many non-white faces in Las Vegas. And while there were slight improvements in Minneapolis, it wasn't good enough - I discussed these issues at length with Denise Oliver-Velez and others in Minneapolis. It should not be only up to a few organizers who work with Netroots Nation to bring people to the convention - they can do their part, but we can help. We can think about ways to make Netroots Nation less of a boring sea of white. We can vote in campaigns like this one.
Here is some more information on this effort, from our own navajo:
[TheFatLadySings] wants to tap the existing organization Communities Joined in Action and send leaders of these community health coalitions to Netroots Nation and introduce them to online organizing tools.
Communities Joined in Action is a national alliance of local coalitions working to end disparities in health care. CJA believes health care is a civil rights issue. It works to create civil rights facts on the ground by teaching coalitions in underserved communities to use the Affordable Care Act and other tools to ensure access to quality health care among the poor, people of color, the homeless and other hard-to-reach populations.
This year, a Marketing and New Media Committee has been created and dedicated to teaching coalitions to build power through community organizing, and to make use of online organizing tools. TheFatLadySings, known to her non-blogging friends as Lauren Reichelt, has been tapped to chair this new CJA Marketing and New Media committee. She has submitted a Pepsi Challenge Grant for $50,000 to help Communities Joined in Action to bring a large CJA delegation to NN12 to caucus with bloggers and to learn on- and offline organizing techniques. She will also help CJA to develop webinars to teach community coalitions across the US to use some of these tools.
Last year, TheFatLadySings brought three colleagues from Rio Arriba County in Northern New Mexico, to NN11 in Minneapolis. They attended the American Indian and Latino Caucuses as well as workshops in community organizing, messaging, online tools, etc. Since then, Rio Arriba County has hired a Public Information Officer, revamped their County and health council websites, including a blog so they can communicate directly with the public.
This will bring more people of color to Netroots Nation in Providence, and it takes a few clicks and a small effort to vote once a day - and the important thing is to accumulate daily votes, as Raven Brooks noted in the quote above.
Beyond this effort, we should all think about ways we can assist in bringing in people from marginalized communities to Netroots Nation. This is important, and even if it weren't personal for me, it's something worth working on - worth fighting for. Just because some voices can't reach us doesn't mean they are less valuable. Let's give them a chance to speak with their own voice - the way I was given one.