social justice

In Thursday night's debate, Sarah Palin told America that she favored dropping assets connected to the Sudanese government within the state's large investment fund as a means of protesting the genocide occurring in the country. But, of course, she was misleading.

ABC News looked into this claim, and found out that she was -- shock! -- against divestment until it was politically convenient for her to be for it.

The Gara-Lynn Sudan Divestment bill was reviewed in February at a public hearing. A Palin administration official testified against it:

"The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination," testified Brian Andrews, Palin's deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature.

The minutes are here in case you're interested.

It took some time, but Palin finally came around to it, even if it was very late in the legislative year.

Gara said that after it was clear the bill had stalled, he and others pressed the administration directly on Sudan divestment.

"We were outraged," Gara recounted. "We went to the Commissioner of Revenue and said, 'What the hell are you guys doing? This is genocide. We're going to keep pushing this until we divest."

Two months later, at the end of the legislative session, the administration softened its position. Appearing before a Senate committee which was considering a companion measure to Gara's bill, Palin's Revenue commissioner, Patrick Galvin, stated the administration supported such a measure, though it hoped to amend the bill to allow for investments held indirectly, for example in index funds.

And Palin is supposed to appeal to the youth vote for the GOP?

Thanks to WireTap, here's how passionate youth feel about the ongoing genocide in Sudan:

Three years after the United States classified the situation in Darfur, Sudan, as a genocide, students are still organizing to make sure the crucial cause doesn't get ignored. In April, two thousand white-clad activists played dead in Boston Commons for five minutes of silence. In December, thousands of students worldwide fasted to raise money to fight rape in the African region. STAND, a student anti-genocide coalition, helped organize those events and hundreds of others this year. Students have been signing petitions, lobbying representatives, staging events -- anything to keep Darfur in the news. And the coverage has paid off. Companies have started divesting in ventures that support the government that allows the genocide to continue, and awareness is at an all-time high. As long as the violence rages, so will the activism. "The world has been slow to act to protect the people of Darfur," said STAND student director Scott Warren, "so students across the globe will be taking protection into their own hands."

Don't play politics with Sudan, Ms. Palin.

My name is April Joy Damian, a guest blogger from Young People For (YP4). I graduated from UC Berkeley in Ethnic Studies, completed a post-bac program at City College of San Francisco, and am currently participating as a YP4 Leadership Academy Fellow prior to beginning medical school.

I first heard about YP4 through an email from a partner organization. My initial reaction to the name of the organization was, "Young people for what?" Intrigued by its name, I decided to visit the YP4 website where I noticed that various issues pop up after the title "Young People For," including, but not limited to, public education, religious freedom, and environmental protection. Thus, while the YP4 home page provides the organization's mission, YP4 in my own words, encourages young people to come up with the process (how) and substance (what) while providing the tools to allow young leaders to achieve both. Rather than dictate what issues are important and the best mechanisms to address these, YP4 challenged me to take a stance on a social concern and to take ownership of how to best resolve it.

As mentioned earlier, I am currently participating in the 2008-2009 Young People For Leadership Academy. The college bubble, both at UC Berkeley as well as at City College of San Francisco, was a mixed blessing. It was in college that I discovered my unique role in the progressive movement and passion to serve as a leader in social justice. I was fortunate enough to meet other like-minded students with whom I was able to build a network of support. As graduation drew closer and medical school was just around the corner, I knew that the end of college did not necessarily mean the end of my "social justice phase." Rather, I wanted to my involvement in the progressive movement to be my way of life. The Leadership Academy was just the right antidote.

As noted in a previous YP4 blog on the Leadership Academy, my participation in the program has provided me with the post-college/pre-grad school support system I need to continue in my progressive work in medicine/public health. The program has weaved a beautiful balance between developing my capacity as a young professional through mentorship and coaching sessions with Cathy Wasserman, while nurturing my humanity and need to laugh, cry, and even simply rest. Through the Leadership Academy, I hope to grow in my leadership capacity both in the professional and personal realms. I hope to have my character, values, and opinions challenged, while also challenging my 20 fellow participants and program staff to think differently.

There is an interesting new site/organization called Songs in the Key of Justice that I stumbled upon today. It is a movement out of the Catholic community for teens embracing and continuing the social justice movement (seemingly lost on the new outbreak of conservative Catholics).

SIKOJ (Sik - oj? gotta rethink that acronym) encourages its participants to be active in their communities, schools, parishes, all to impact their world and make a difference. This is not a new concept for the faith based community, but so often its wrapped around an ideology and the spread of the faith that the actual social justice activism is lost.

This is a great organization for pushing activism, but it falls into the continued trap of forcing its faith as a cornerstone of its outreach.

From their "Making a Difference" section Keeping the Faith

"Keeping the faith has taken on a whole new meaning for Catholic young people in Iraq over the past two years. But these young people have more than demonstrated they are up to the challenge of the Gospel!"

Oy. Like there isn't something more important right now to Iraqi children... like... getting to the market or to school without being blown up. I'm just sayin..

There is an embedded social networking site through the website where people of faith can connect and ideally create a collective action around a social project in their community. I was the only person within 3 states around me that was not a youth minister on the SN site. Perhaps it will catch on in the catholic community...

Most times I want to reward organizations that do any kind of youth outreach at all because its a step in the right direction. And using young people to impact their world is an even greater accomplishment, but when its using them as foot soldiers for a doctrine it begins the slippery slope into that whole Jesus Camp mentality.

I still say that if you want to impact the world through social justice movements that are faith based - I would go to something a little less focused on pushing a specific faith but pushes more a solution to the disaster at hand. Save Darfur is a good one, Invisible Children is another.

Is anyone else sick of this kind of sinister approach to REAL social justice? That said, its an indicator to those of us who are on the left that the right wing is beginning to catch up to the internets... And they're doing it to reach out to young people... prepare for indoctrination!

There are few Justices out there that are as hip as Sandra D. Seems the good x-Justice has been spending her time working on video games.

NYTimes reports that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has gone from her post on the US Supreme Court to working to develop video games that create real life scenarios for students to learn the law and create interest in ways to change laws.

"If you imagine what Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is doing in her retirement, you might not come up with this: designing provocative clothing for virtual avatars to wear in a multi-player online game.

But potentially offensive T-shirts, and the First Amendment issues they may raise, are in fact a key part of the computer game that the retired justice is helping design as part of an elaborate civics education program she is sponsoring.

The first section of the game is about a First Amendment issue like a t-shirt that a kid wears to school. This is similar to the real life case of the kid who made a sign that said "bong hits 4 Jesus" for a local school rally.

"Justice O’Connor didn’t describe the actual game play, but she said it will involve players taking different roles in a court argument.

“We will have them arguing real cases, real issues, against the computer and against each other,” she said. “We will use what we know about young people’s enthusiasm for arguing things, for problem-solving and for playing games to get them into this world.”

Later, Justice O’Connor would like to add a case about the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. And down the road, she said she hopes to create similar simulations for the legislative and executive branches of government."

I really respect what the Justice is doing and truly admire the attempts at doing these kinds of educational materials. I worry, however, that this only educates and doesn't necessarily promote the idea of civic engagement.

When you look at the middle school level, I don't know if kids are going to make the link between the way the law is and their power to change what they don't like. We have a hard enough time making that connection for adults and college students who are new registrants.

I would have to see the game or the lesson plan to really understand more about how they are making that link but I'm encouraged and hopeful though admittedly cautious as well. Regardless, its a pretty smokin Justice if she's making video games. That's pretty cool.

In about five minutes I'm jumping in a car and heading down to DC to attend the Take Back America 2007 Conference. I'm going to try and do one or two "live-blogs" from there, though that will depend a bit on getting some free time. Either way, if you're reading this, and you're attending the conference and would like to meet up, let me know in comments. If you're in DC, but not planning on going to the conference, you should still come out to the Drinking/Living Liberally parties. There's one on both Monday and Tuesday night.

Update 1: I'm heading to a panel on youth voting right now. I'll see how it goes.

Update 2: Fred and I have added some comments on the conference below.

Update 3 (by mike): Here's our own Alex UA talking to the Dodd campaign about student loan transparency and reaching out to young voters:

Peter Levine points to a study that documents the cold, hard realities of one inner city zip code (53206). In this Milwaukee, Wisconsin zip code:

62% of the men in their early thirties are now or have been in state prisons;

The number of incarcerations for "drug offenses only" has risen by 493% since 1993 (yet more incarcerations are for assault than for drug offenses);

Women in their 30s outnumber men by 3 to 2;

Housing prices have risen by at least 50% in the last three years;

The average income of tax-filers (a small proportion of the population) was $17,547; 90 percent of these individuals are single parents;

Two thirds of consumer spending is outside the zip code;

Ninety percent of people who declare income from working in the zip code live outside it;

56 percent of people who declare income from working in the zip code are white even though 97 percent of the residents are African American; and

More than three quarters of loans to homeowners are subprime or high interest.

This sounds exactly like the areas where I worked during the last election, and I fully agree with Peter that "civic, participatory, grassroots strategies need to work for people in places like 53206--and quickly. That is the test of whether they are worth anything at all." In fact, I'm pretty sure that this description could describe at least 25% of Philadelphia.

I have been working on a few funding proposals in the hope of getting the 8th Street project going once again, and the biggest change to my thinking on the project is that it absolutely must have some component that deals with the realities that face many, if not most, of the city's youth: i.e. high dropout and crime rates, few opportunities for positive advancement, very little in the way of financial resources, etc. I briefly discussed this in my post on IDAAY and Don't Fall Down in the Hood, which sound exactly like the projects in the spirit of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute (which Peter points to in his post).

The asset-based approach is explained well in the introduction to "Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets" by John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight, which the ABCD Institute credits with the increased interest in these types of programs.

Each community boasts a unique combination of assets upon which to build its future. A thorough map of those assets would begin with an inventory of the gifts, skills and capacities of the community's residents. Household by household, building by building, block by block, the capacity mapmakers will discover a vast and often surprising array of individual talents and productive skills, few of which are being mobilized for community-building purposes. This basic truth about the "giftedness" of every individual is particularly important to apply to persons who often find themselves marginalized by communities. It is essential to recognize the capacities, for example, of those who have been labeled mentally handicapped or disabled, or of those who are marginalized because they are too old, or too young, or too poor. In a community whose assets are being fully recognized and mobilized, these people too will be part of the action, not as clients or recipients of aid, but as full contributors to the community-building process.

In addition to mapping the gifts and skills of individuals, and of households and families, the committed community builder will compile an inventory of citizens' associations. These associations, less formal and much less dependent upon paid staff than are formal institutions, are the vehicles through which citizens in the U.S. assemble to solve problems, or to share common interests and activities. It is usually the case that the depth and extent of associational life in any community is vastly underestimated. This is particularly true of lower income communities. In fact, however, though some parts of associational life may have dwindled in very low income neighborhoods, most communities continue to harbor significant numbers of associations with religious, cultural, athletic, recreational and other purposes. Community builders soon recognize that these groups are indispensable tools for development, and that many of them can in fact be stretched beyond their original purposes and intentions to become full contributors to the development process.

Beyond the individuals and local associations that make up the asset base of communities are all of the more formal institutions which are located in the community. Private businesses; public institutions such as schools, libraries, parks, police and fire stations; nonprofit institutions such as hospitals and social service agencies--these organizations make up the most visible and formal part of a community's fabric. Accounting for them in full, and enlisting them in the process of community development, is essential to the success of the process. For community builders, the process of mapping the institutional assets of the community will often be much simpler than that of making an inventory involving individuals and associations. But establishing within each institution a sense of responsibility for the health of the local community, along with mechanisms that allow communities to influence and even control some aspects of the institution's relationships with its local neighborhood, can prove much more difficult. Nevertheless, a community that has located and mobilized its entire base of assets will clearly feature heavily involved and invested local institutions.

To a large degree, this approach is the exact approach that we have been talking about since the Music for America days: that we must mobilize our cultural and social assets and bring them to bare on the political world. The biggest difference that I can see is the focus on impoverished communities, something which I don't think we talked much about in the past, primarily because our focus was on defeating the Republicans and/or building progressive political infrastructure.

But, as with everything in this nation there was most definitely a class bias to our thinking, and it is this bias which I believe causes the rift between social justice groups and progressive political organizations. It is this gap that I am currently trying to figure out how to bridge, within the context of the project I linked to above, and I hope that we can in fact make some inroads here.

I am trying to get Mark Ensley, who works for IDAAY and who I am working on an updated proposal with, to come on here and talk about things from the asset-based principles that IDAAY works from, as well as how he sees things as someone who grew up in, and who is actively trying to improve, SW Philly, our poorest neighborhood.

Working on campaigns is one continuous contradiction, which is to say that is an amplified/sped up version of life in general. Candidates are at both times selfless and incredibly self absorbed. Those who work in or around politics (as well as the organizations they belong to or control) run the gamut from completely immoral Machiavelli wannabes to unbelievably noble crusaders for justice (most fall someplace in between). And while it is easy enough to get discouraged by the bad side of politics, I stay involved and will continue to stay involved because of all of the amazing people that I meet.

Mike's discussion of the divide between the social justice and progressive youth politics movements brought to mind one of the most inspiring organizations that I crossed paths with during this past cycle: the Institute for the Development of African American Youth (IDAAY) and their program Don't Fall Down in the Hood. Neither IDAAY nor Don't Fall Down in the Hood are focused primarily on politics, they focus on intervention and development amongst young, poor, minority Philadelphians. Here's how IDAAY's site describes Don't Fall Down in the Hood:

This is a rough articulation of a problem I’m grappling with, and its quickly shaping up to be its own chapter in my book (though it wasn’t part of my original outline). I need a lot of help teasing this out, so comments are very much appreciated.

As I’ve been considering the place of - or more frequently total lack of - organizations whose mission it is to reach out to, engage, and elevate young people of color in our politics, I’ve started to think a lot lately about the divide between two major progressive constituencies: those who understand political activity through the vocabulary and history of social justice movements, vs. those who consider themselves to be part of a new progressive movement.

This new progressive movement seeks to work within and transform the system. It is party-based and electoral. During interviews for my book, a couple people pointed out to me that a lot of political terminology and basic concepts that we in this movement take for granted - including the term progressive - are either alienating or just nonstarters among a lot of young people of color. Instead, young people of color understand politics through a language based in community organizing, human rights, civil rights, and social justice. That is a language the progressive movement rarely embraces. Worse, its a language that the Democratic Party - our chosen vehicle of change - almost never embraces.

For the most part, it’s a racial divide (though not exclusively so). In the past, the civil rights movement offered a common mission and language. But identity politics is reaching its limits as a vehicle for accomplishing change, and we can’t remain siloed anymore. At the same time, asking people to drop identity politics altogether is totally unacceptable. That model developed for a reason - to address structural and outright biases in our system. These problems persist, and you can’t deny that a rightful place in our political conversation.

So, in the words of Led Zeppelin, “Where’s the bridge?” This is a problem for the progressive movement in general, but, as the most diverse generation in modern American history, it has particular relevance to any discussion of Millennial politics.