I'm just going to say it, I love Rev. Joseph Lowery.

Listening to his benediction reminded me why I sometimes feel a disconnect between, now, President Obama's promises and ideas, and the earlier Civil Rights era. While both Lowery and Mr Obama spoke of a need to work together, and a spirit of sacrifice, Rev. Lowery, who was an integral part of that earlier time and movement, also filled his prayer with words and ideas I feel as though I seldom hear from the new administration. One important phrase being 'poor people', coupled with an unabashed use of the word 'justice'.

Obviously, there is a huge difference between a benediction and public policy, and I don't expect the Obama administration to announce "the beating of tanks into tractors" as part of the employment stimulus plan--although it is a really lovely image--but I would love to see this reminder that the middle class is not the only class, and this time around not even the only voting class, translated into some serious initiatives to restore a notion of the rights of people living in poverty, and some acknowledgments of the previous policies and actions that have worked to strip away that idea.

One of my favorite Martin Luther King Jr quotes is "power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic." It's great that the love seems to be back in power, but now it's time to use that love to empower.

All those who love justice and mercy say amen indeed.
________________________
check out this re-post from illdoctrine.com at RaceWire of this and nine other great MLK Jr. quotes. 

image:Illinois Wesleyan University

It is a great pleasure to share a moment through blog with “Women of Color” about this herstorical/historical time in elections. My family is from the island of Tonga in the South Pacific. I grew up watching my father work hard and supporting our family through landscaping, a highly seasonal job. I was fortunate that my mother was a stay-at-home mom who worked hard to nurture our educational dreams and to keep us grounded. I never forget the journey that my family has come through and all the challenges we faced trying to first find landscaping jobs, make ends meet and navigate our way through the educational system.

I know that we have power in our voices. All the struggles we went through as a family, I know that I’m not alone in that type of struggle. Other Pacific Islanders struggle, Hawaiian, Chamorros, Fijians, and Samoans struggle just as we did. We can do one of two things: complain or do something about it. I have chosen to encourage others to use their privilege of voting to project that voice and have that voice heard. There are laws that affect us directly and that is something I want my community to know. I and my best friend, Amelia Niumeitolu, started a voter registration and information site on bebo.com, a site that is highly popular among Pacific Islanders worldwide. We wanted Pacific Islanders worldwide to be informed of the historical events happening in America and how it will affect our Pacific Island community in terms of presidential candidates to state-specific Propositions. We have power in offering the future of our Pacific Island generations to come a pace and example that we can set for them. I have great hope for our Pacific Island people and that we can and will be seen and heard within civic engagements and public policy. I am a mother of two and currently studying at California State University, Northridge. Although it is a challenge to be a mother, student, and work—it is rewarding to do something that I believe in and am passionate about to help my community. My hopes are that my passion will ignite in someone else the passion I feel to help our Pacific Island community be more active, more involved…and of course, hope that it becomes contagious!

Asena Taione lives, work, goes to school and organizes in Los Angeles and started the amazing Obama for ‘Ofa—which translates as love—group on the Bebo social networking site.

And are you a young—or not so young—women of color organizing in your community? We’d love to share your stories and you work with the whole Speak Fierce! community get in touch at blog[at]coloredgirls.org

Image:flickr

Radio is such a great medium for expressing ideas and telling stories. It can suck you in even while you’re driving or doing the dishes. Every year the Third Coast Festival hosts an awards ceremony to celebrate the best radio stories of the year.

This years’ Silver medal in the documentary category went to a story called Growing Up in the System. In Growing Up Shirley “Star” Diaz tells her story of aging out of the foster care system. She carried an audio recorder with her for months recording her thoughts and capturing the voices of friends and family. The documentary was produced as part of the Radio Rookies youth program at New York public radio station.

WCRC’s own radio training program TEMPO is getting ready to start a new session in 2009, but in the meanwhile you can listen to past TEMPO stories at www.coloredgirls.org/tempo, and at Public Radio Exchange (PRX) where you can also discover other independent voices.

You can also read about the TEMPO experience directly from one of our mentors.

At WCRC we’re all about women’s leadership which is why it’s so exciting to share the “One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws” campaign, organized by a group of young women in Iran.

Exactly as the name suggests the campaigners are reaching out to people around the world to support their efforts to push for greater equality in the treatment of women in Iran. In our Peace and Solidarity work we try and point out the impacts of government violence around the world so this is a great opportunity for all of us to follow the lead of this strong group of women and support their work.

You can read more about the campaigners here, and you can sign their petition here. Thanks to the Muslimah Media Watch Blog for turning us onto this campaign. ________________________
These young women are following in a strong tradition of women organizing in Iran. Earlier this month the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), human rights organization of Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, was closed by the Iranian government a move that Ebadi describes as illegal.

Earlier this week in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), thousands of people poured into the streets for a huge demonstration demanding an end to the sexual violence that has become all too common-place in the ongoing military conflict in the DRC. [read more]

WCRC will focus on the DRC in January, exploring the impacts of the ongoing war on women, as well as talking about what people in the United States and other Western nations can do to support, and work in solidarity with the women of DRC.

In the meanwhile here are some links about the abuse and activism of women in this ongoing war.

Muadi Mukenge at the Huffington Post and New America Media
www.huffingtonpost.com
www.newamericamedia.org

A multimedia report from the Guardian newspaper in the UK
www.guardian.co.uk

Videos about the conflict in the words of the women of the DRC and their allies at HUB
hub.witness.org

Are you a young woman of color involved in a social justice project in your community? Is there a woman who inspired you to become an artist or activist?  

In December and January Speak Fierce! will be featuring young voices in two ways, first encouraging young women of color to submit entries about their own social justice work, activism and art, and helping to organize interviews between young women of color, and some of our movement elders. 

This will be an exciting opportunity for us to get to know the next, and next next, generation of women of color leaders.

If you have an idea for an entry or short series you'd like to see on Speak Fierce! please get in touch with your ideas: contact Sheryl-Ann at  ssimpson@coloredgirls.org or 510.444.2700x304 

Blog entries can be text, images, videos, or sound recordings. If you have an idea, but you’re not sure how to make it happen still get in touch and we'll see how WCRC can help. 

photos by Adza

This Thursday December 18th groups of women of color (and friends) martial artists are coming together to showcase their skills and raise money for the New Jersey 4 defense fund. There will be live performances of capoeira, tae kwon do, kajukenbo, aikido and swords!

For some more information on the event, Click to Listen to Inez, one of the participants.

Thursday, December 18

Oakland Asian Cultural Center

388 9th St # 290
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 637-0455

Starts promptly at 6:30pm

Tickets are $10 - $20 Sliding Scale
To guarantee a seat and to reserve tix, e-mail mamiechow@gmail.com
Oakland Asian Cultural Center is wheelchair accessible
Kids under 12 get in FREE!

Check out more information on the NJ4

I've been hearing Geoffrey Canada's name a lot lately, This week he was even on the Colbert Report, talking about his Harlem Children's Zone, and his "Whatever it Takes" model for education. The Harlem Children's Zone is a neighborhood based program where Canada shuttles children through a conveyor belt of learning. Canada uses the term "conveyor belt" to describe his one track model to success, starting with "baby college" for parents, and moving children through, kindergarten, charter schools and finally off to college where students will still be able to rely on resources from the Zone. There are currently thousands of children in Harlem on the conveyor belt and Canada's model is one that President-elect Obama has pointed to as something that needs to be spread to cities around the country.

You can't argue with wanting to educate children, and you can't argue with trying to end poverty, but there is something about Canada's model that makes me uneasy, and funnily enough it took the berating of fake anchor, Colbert, to bring some of my discomfort to the surface.

According to the US census a little more than a quarter of the US population above the age of 25 had bachelor's degrees. Men and women are not quite equal-- with 28% of men and 25% for women with these degrees. However, the big difference comes when we look at race. Blacks held BA/BS degrees at 17% and Latinos at 11%. Whites were at 30%, and while Asians were at 50%, recent reports are highlighting the ways in which the extremely broad category of 'Asian' might be masking out a great deal of need.

Particularly because of these huge disparities, I am not opposed to trying to even out these statistics and getting more underrepresented students of color into colleges. I am also not opposed to the transition team's plans to try and make it more affordable. But I can't help but wonder if getting individual students into college is the best response to ending community poverty. Forget about racial discrimination for a second, forget about affordability too, just talking about seats in classrooms…we would need twice as many spots in four-year colleges for even half of the population to get a bachelors degree, and unfortunately, Canada's plan doesn't seem to acknowledge, much less address these more structural questions.

Canada's education plan, and much of Obama's education plans up until this point seem to focus on an individualized business model for success. The goal is to move enough product along the conveyor belt, rewarding units with high productivity and closing units for poor. One bright spot is the inclusion of Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, whose book The Right to Learn, with its focus on strengthening teaching and looking at learning as a goal unto itself suggests that she might have a very different model for success.

Here are some interesting profiles of potential Secretary of Education picks.

San Francisco Chronicle

Teachers Magazine

Edutopia

And if you have a though about what we want from out education system leave a comment at Speak Fierce! or let the transition team know what's on your mind.

Image Source: Flikr

Women Count is a group of netroots organizers that are working hard to build a broad coalition of women, and get our political voices heard. One of their main projects is a campaign for a Presidential Commission on Women, as a way to start the conversation on the status and future of women in the country, and to bring as many women as possible into that conversation.

You can sign their petition here:

Did you know there was a Presidential Commission on Women in 1961?

Here's some more information on what these commissions can look and sound like:

1961 Presidential Commission on Women

1967 Royal Commission on the Status of Women

image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/globalknowledgepartnership/2100310590/

Ok, I’ll totally admit it…by the end of Facing Race I was exhausted, so first, a huge thank you to Laura for encouraging me to go to the final plenary session on the global economy. Filled with amazing people and great ideas, it’s really no wonder I was exhausted at the end of it all. The thread throughout the conference was building a common vocabulary for ‘leading with race’. Especially helpful was an idea that I heard a number of times to look beyond intentions to outcomes.

In Oakland, we’re in the middle of wrapping our heads around the budget madness that continues at various levels of government. Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan for salvaging the California economy involves raising sales taxes, while carving away huge slices of funding from education; a plan that directly and disproportionately impacts the poorest individuals and households in California. The poorest individuals and households also just happen to be people of color. According to the US Census Annual Social and Economic Supplement, the rates of poverty for Blacks and Latinos in California are almost twice the rate for Whites.

And this isn’t a new policy trend. From the fiscal year 1998-99 to 2007-08, California government spending on CalWORKs decreased by 1.5 billion dollars while spending on corrections rose by 4.2 billion. Yes, billion, the kind of dollar amounts it becomes impossible to imagine. Once again, these budget choices are racial justice issues. With a high number of households of color receiving the shrinking CalWORKs benefits, and a striking overrepresentation of people of color in the California prison population, the choice to reduce the support to families of color for basic necessities, while building more prisons to house us might not have overtly racist intentions, but the outcomes paint a very different picture.

Back to that final plenary session, and building a common vocabulary, Lebohang Liepollo Pheko gave us the idea of the ‘many-ies’ all of us who are not male, nor White, nor wealthy. It was a wonderful reminder at the end of this conference filled with such wonderful reminders that racial justice issues are majority issues, so whether we’re talking about the local budget, or globalized inequities, leading with race is a winning strategy.

The web has been alive with reactions and reflections on President-Elect Obama and what this election might mean for communities of color, and social justice organizing. The other question is how to interpret the votes against rights affirmative action rights, and marriage rights.

Here are some of our favorites:

An open letter to Barack Obama by Alice Walker
www.theroot.com

Obama on O'ahu by Maxine Hong Kingston
www.huffingtonpost.com

The RaceWire Roundup
www.racewire.org

Farai Chideya host of NPR's News and Notes on Prop 8
www.npr.org

A lighter look at post-election netiquette quandaries
jezebel.com

Welcome to the Age of Yes! By Adrienne Maree Brown
www.adriennemareebrown.net

Is anyone else still really excited?
Here are some quick reactions to this election both the great, and the disappointing from our Facebook Group.

In Oakland and Berkeley there were fireworks, in San Francisco parts of the city shut down and strangers danced together in the streets high-fiving, and hugging. This presidential election is historic, not just because of the results, but because of the tireless community organizing that went into pulling it all off. During this election, groups on the left came to organize, educate, and mobilize voters.

Now it’s time to keep the momentum going, and turn this historic moment into a movement.

The Women of Color Resource Center is hosting a lunch-time discussionon post-election women of color, justice, and progressive organizing beyond the vote in our offices Tuesday November 11 at 12:30. It will also be a great lead into ARC’s Facing Race conference later that week.

I grew up in a small town in Florida and remembered visiting the Bay Area as a kid. It was for me, an oasis in the desert of conservativism, homogenity, and rigidity of my home life. In fact, beyond the surface cool, California represented for me the promise of equality, acceptance, peace. A place that I could see myself making a home and a life. And yet how is it that on the same day the New York Times trumpets “Racial Barrier Lifted”, in the announcement of Obama’s victory, that California, along with my home state of Florida has voted to ban same sex marriages? I’m in a fog of puzzlement about the motivations that would lead the 61% who voted for Obama in this state to allow Proposition 8 to be passed in that same breath.

Our charge is to do more than to hold Obama and his administration accountable. That’s the bare minimum. We need to hold ourselves, our communities, our families, and our movement accountable to ensure that we are tuning in to the same dial, to achieve the synchronicity of values and principles that allowed us to vote for change in the White House, and in all facets of our lives—locally, statewide and nationally. I truly believe that there is an “arc bending towards justice.” It was once a straight rod made of steel…and throughout the decades, people of color, the poor, immigrants, queer folks, workers, women, and children have worked to bend it in to that arc of justice. Let us remember to work in unison. We are all hoping for the same things- the right to self-determination, the right for economic and social equality and the right to be treated as full human-beings. This morning, I want to channel the California that brought me here, and I want to understand with my comrades and my neighbors, just where we went wrong on this one, and what we are going to do about it before the next election.
image:www.flickr.com/photos/29281410@N08/2948638702/

We had an explosion of cultural workers, creating signs and images and slogans. Some of the sharpest political commentary, artisanship, graffiti, public art. We adorned our bodies, our homes, our vehicles with these images. We were proud.

We brought our video cameras, our reporters notebooks, our lawyers to the polls—we were watchful that our ballots were counted, we anticipated the worst, we were surprised at the best.

We saw faces that looked like us, in the audience, in the streets, at the rallies. We were interviewed, our voices captured. It mattered what we had to say.

We got a pat on the back for the work that we have done as workers, as women, as immigrants, as activists—we are a movement of movements, we are not working in vain. We mightily pushed the boulder of social justice up a steep, steep mountain and we did indeed bend toward the arc of justice.

We reinvigorated the language of human rights, of social justice, of inequality, of racial equity. We researched and wrote and listened to the words of those who had come before us. We replayed the words of the ones in front of us.

We proved that we were alive yesterday. That we were capable of spontaneous celebrations, no malice, just peace, with high-fives, hugs, and fist pounds to our neighbors.

We watched them dance in the streets in Kenya. We saw the global streets festooned in confetti, not signs of protest. It is a brand new day.

We saw the possibility of the positive, of compassion, of a world premised on justice and on love.

Let us not set our brother up for failure. Let’s strategize, communicate, and innovate just as we have been doing these many months, so that we can build a net of strength around ourselves, a web of interconnectivity that allows our humanity to shine forth and to imagine the possibilities of the movement, not just the moment.
images: Jane Androski, www.flickr.com/photos/bobjagendorf,www.flickr.com/photos/faeryboots

Election Day is tomorrow!

Record numbers of people are registered to vote, thanks to the hard work of community organizers across the country.  Millions have already voted through absentee ballots, and early at the polls, but if you are waiting until Tuesday, this is our quick reminder to get out and vote, and bring your friends and family.

Let us know about any resources you’ve heard about, or just let us know what these last few days of the race are like in your state. 

­­The Liberator magazine put together an awesome spreadsheet listing the voting rights of felons for each state. I was always told ­that felons don't have the right to vote but it turns out that in California, and many other states, they do. Unfortunately, in some states it's considered voter fraud, and a crime to vote if you are a felon.
The Sentencing Project estimates that 5.3 million people in the U.S. are unable to vote because of felony convictions, and 13% of Black men the U.S. are denied their right to vote. The rates of women incarceration are rising twice as fast as for men, which means more and more women, and women of color will also see their right to vote taken away. Check out the link to see what the laws are like in your state, and pass the information along. ­

The American News Project also just posted this piece about felon voting rights in Virginia.
­image:www.flickr.com/photos/rwhitlock

On October 1st the fabulous members of Women of Color United launched the 41 Million Strong Campaign. Starting in Nashville, and ending on election night in Miami, they are traveling around the country to get out the women of color vote. The first goal of the campaign was to increase the number of women who are registering to vote, by drawing on the vast grassroots network of women of color around the country. But 41 Million Strong is also doing the hard follow-up work needed to get out the vote on Election Day.

 41 Million Strong wants to “increase the awareness of the general public, and specifically among women of color, about issues that are at stake in the coming elections and that disproportionately affect women of color globally.” Finally, the campaign doesn’t end on the 4th. After the election they will be working to hold elected officials to the promises they’ve made, and keep on drawing attention to the issues important to communities of color.

Take a look at their blog to keep up-to-date on the campaign, and keep an eye on Speak Fierce! for updates, and some interviews with the women involved the campaign, and the women coming out to vote.

41 Million Strong: www.womenofcolorunited.org/41-million-strong-road-tour

Much has been said about the Bradley effect-a term describing a hypothesis of why, despite popular voter opinion polls, a candidate of color does not ultimately fare well when it counts, in election day numbers. The Bradley effect is named after Tom Bradley, the African American gubernatorial 1982 candidate from California, who enjoyed widespread, positive popular support, but who lost out to his White counterpart. There is, of course, concern that despite the current snapshot of favorable numbers for Obama, that when voters go to the polls the irrational fear-factor of a Black president will trump rational good sense. Recent Republican rallies have demonstrated that the Bradley effect doesn't just happen in the secrecy of the curtained polling booth, it happens in the great wide open expanse of Q&A sessions with McCain. It also happens, it turns out, at the other end of a microphone of an Al-Jazeera English reporter who captured this nauseating display of racist, hate-mongering feedback about why Obama wouldn't be this person's pick for president. It's easy to assume that these are the voices of a fringe element-but I for one, don't believe that they are. In many ways, they may just be the more outspoken elements of a more widely held Bradley effect. While the whole clip may read like an SNL spoof, it is important to take stock of what this kind of public, unabashed display of misinformation means for the current state of white supremacy in this country, far beyond the timeframe of the presidential elections.

To watch the video click here.