August 2008 Archives

The news was a big surprise -- most people were talking about Mitt Romney, Timothy Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal and even "independent democrat" Joe Lieberman. And just a month ago Palin herself said in an interview that the vice presidency didn't seem productive. Still, she's seen as a rising star in the Republican Party.

The choice of Palin is at least partly a bid to bring Hillary Clinton followers over to vote for a woman, but her anti-abortion stance probably won't appeal much to Democratic voters. And that's just the start of a laundry list of cons.

In particular, her youth and inexperience could backfire on the GOP: while Dems may not be able to bash her inexperience for fear of drawing attention to Obama's short political resume, but how easily can the Republicans call Obama "the most inexperienced candidate of our times" when Palin has just two years as governor and the mayorship of a small town in Alaska under her belt? If McCain is elected, he'll be 73, the oldest president ever, so the possibility of his VP stepping in is a much more serious consideration. Chuck the "not ready to lead the country" line right out the window.

[Image source: Wikimedia Commons]

The Chicago 10 was screened in just a few cities back in January, and on Tuesday this week it was released on DVD. Half animation/half film, this documentary chronicles the riots that rocked Chicago in 1968 for just one day, but left an indelible impact on Chicago's and America's history alike.

Eight years of it. Or so say these guys from Seattle, who came to Denver to make their case against McCain with a healthy dose of humor.

I have so many video and photographic goodies to bring over this way it's driving me insane that I'm finding it ironically hard to sit down and blog. It's why the death of my Nokia 95 hurts so bad. I could have streamed things and made them readily available to the blog.

Oh well.

Last night was a blast. Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden and of course, Barack Obama: They all knocked it out of the park in the evening. Yet it was Hillary Clinton's fateful words calling for the suspension of the roll call and asking for a unanimous vote for Barack Obama that really changed the course of history. So much so, that Hillary so has my love back.

Yet for now, I leave you with this teaser. While David and Nezua cover the on-the-ground happenings, Michael and I will be inside of Invesco Stadium. What awaits us? A line that is a mile long and a three-hour wait period to go through security.

Yup.

That's part of the reason I haven't be able to blog so often. Geez, my life has been about going through security check points.

It is, though, worth the wait.

I asked this guy what his shirt means, and he just pointed to the phrase in question. "But that can be interpreted in so many ways," I said, thinking he was just being a jerk.

"Exactly," he said. "Why do I have to tell you what it means? Can't you think for yourself?"

Interesting retort... Really.

It was a relief after contending with the mayhem to the north for two days, but it also revealed something we all know about American politics but don't often see with our own eyes: the two-party system dominates our elections, the mainstream media propagates that dominance with every story they choose to cover, and there's a wealth of stories, political agendas, and campaigns you'll likely never hear about.

One such story, largely ignored by the papers, the TV stations, and even a lot of blogs, is that Ralph Nader was enjoying a king's welcome by 4,000 fans in the same city that's got the attention of a nation this week.

Nader was main act in an evening that seemed more like a rock concert than a political rally. He had a bunch of opening acts: Sean Penn, Val Kilmer, Jello Biafra, Cindy Sheehan, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and the Nightwatchman, and a host of lesser known devotees of the anti-two-party, anti-corporate government, anti-status-quo cause.

Sean Penn spoke eloquently -- though sometimes with convoluted logic -- about why both Barack Obama and John McCain are too steeped in corporate influence to affect real change. He called for a revolution in our thinking that will address head-on the problems we face: poverty, the war in Iraq, and media bias. Towards the end, he was impassioned to the point of anger (though he is, of course, an actor and master orator).

Jello Biafra, with his signature lilting voice that anyone familiar with the Dead Kennedys will know instantly, didn't take long to get his rant on. Always loquacious and provocative, Biafra echoed much of Penn's speech, but added the war on drugs to the list of efforts not being sufficiently addressed by our current leaders. His solution: END IT!

By the time Nader went on, though, we'd sat through three musical performances, several speakers, and an endless fundraising effort by Nader's chief fundraiser. He literally begged for donations like an auctioneer, starting out with a plea for $4,600, which was met by the actress Brooke Smith (Silence of the Lambs). He then lowered his request incrementally to $50, earning somewhere around $15,000 for Nader in real-time (real long time).

"I'm raising money," he said. "The rent isn't free, the campaign isn't free, but at least it's all above-board folks!" (The comment was in reference to his earlier criticism of Obama's methods: to claim he's funding his campaign with small donations through his Website when in fact he's throwing dinners with a $30,000 cover charge every time the media turns its back.)

All this hoopla had a downside: Nader himself spoke to a much smaller audience than his opening acts had. People began streaming out during the fundraising marathon, and those left seemed weary of hearing the same themes reiterated again and again for the previous four hours.

But this isn't a criticism of Nader's campaign, his supporters, or even the methods on display last night. It's merely an objective account of the state of political campaigning and discourse in this country today.

A striking aspect of the Denver Convention is the use of apparel and accessories to convey political statements.

Meet AJ Bontempo, co-founder of ChangeRing. Simple idea: they produce an item of universal usefulness, a keyring, that they've crafted to be a symbol of change. Quite neat.

A lesbian blogger.

Halloween this year is six days before the general election. Another really simple idea: a national voter outreach drive on the one night -- Halloween -- where everyone in America willingly opens their door to talk to perfect strangers.

Since 1997, politics and social issues have played a huge role in American life. The end of the Clinton years, the dot-com bust, GW, 9/11, and an endless journey into Iraq -- not to mention the economy, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, Hurricane Katrina...

All of this has provided endless fodder for the independent filmmaker, and Rooftop Films has been their champion for more than a decade. Below, Rooftop's founder, Mark Elijah Rosenberg, shares some thoughts about the socio-political works he's shown over the years, and describes a tremendous initiative he began to help fund Rooftop alumni's projects through grants generated from admissions tickets.

What are the most prominent social/political themes you've seen in this year's submissions?

We seek out intimate, personal cinema -- movies that focus on individuals and specific communities -- and through those stories, we see larger issues. For us, the individual always comes before the theme. So we show films that touch on social and political themes that maybe a lot of people aren't talking about. For instance, on September 6, on Roosevelt Island, we're showing Marjan Tehrani's film Arusi: Persian Wedding, in which the Iranian-American filmmaker travels to Iran for the first time in decades to attend her brother's wedding. So the film is a love story and a family reunion film, but through that perspective the film also investigates decades of US-Iranian tensions, and shows how those tensions can be transcended on a personal level.

I met this representative of AfterDowningStreet.org this morning on the 16th Street Mall, the best place to get a civilian perspective of the DNC. The pedestrian mall runs for a couple dozen blocks through downtown Denver, attracting thousands of folks who may lack press credentials but have no shortage of flair.

Yes, that's a mint in her hand. An "Impeach Mint."

This is not a story that proponents of the Iraq War will find comfortable. Here, have a look.

Meet a parent whose child -- a 20-year-old son, to be precise -- spent two years in Iraq and sustained a catastrophic brain injury. That's his photo on his dad's placard. The name isn't important; there are thousands of parents in America whose children have suffered the same fate. Many of them have banded together, as did this gentleman and his fellow protester, in an organization called Military Families Speak Out.

I'd like to see advocates for the rightness of this war explain to this man why his son's life had to be ruined beyond hope of repair, and what platitudes about freedom, terror, fighting-them-there-so-we-don't-have-to-fight-them-here justify a young life destroyed as surely as if it had been ended entirely.

For anyone unfamiliar with Denver, here's a cheat sheet: From Pepsi Center to Convention Center: 1.3 miles, or a 30-minute walk. From Convention Center to Civic Center Park: 0.7 miles, 16-minute walk. From Pepsi Center to Civic Center Park: 2.0 miles, 46-minute walk. (And these times don't account for the influx of 60,000 people and police flooding city streets, obstructing even foot traffic.)

The Pepsi Center, site of the speeches broadcast each evening is an off-limits mystery to the non-credentialed, surrounded by a buffer zone so wide that the Pepsi Center isn't even visible from one of its entrances. Here even a celebrity journalist-Fox New's Alan Colmes (you know, the "liberal" one)-was refused entrance until a Fox handler came out to rescue him (during which time he turned down the autograph request of a Fox news devotee with a sign proclaiming his undying love for the network of fair and balanced news).

The same entrance that held up Colmes was the site of the only police action I observed on Tuesday. An uppity group of anti-abortion activists broke free of the prescribed protest zone in Civic Center Park, and made an break for the entrance to the Pepsi Center's buffer zone. As described in an earlier post, this act and the temporary blockage of the gate got a bunch of these martyrs arrested, and delayed journalists and delegates' entrance to the Pepsi Convention Center for a whole 15 minutes. Hope the ride to jail was worth the attention of the 30 or so folks around the gate and massive disruption of these very busy people's schedules.

Had they played by the rules, these anti-abortion activists should have been in Civic Center Park, fourteen blocks away. This was a haven for those alternative voices that wanted to be heard at the convention, but weren't warmly welcomed with open arms by the DNC. Here one finds the libertarians, advocates for the legalization of drugs, supporters of returning stolen lands to native Americans and Mexico, environmentalists, and peace activists. Civic Center Park was also home to the greatest visible concentration of Metro Denver's police in riot gear, helmets, and plastic handcuffs drapped over each shoulder, and a holster of either tear gas or mace (I didn't look too close) in a holster on each waist.

Interestingly, the one group of demonstrators that was allowed to set up displays outside of Civic Center Park was the Falun Gong, who had an impressive amount of space for their displays and demonstrations on the side of the street much closer to the third major convention destination, the Convention Center.

The Convention Center is home to the daytime caucuses-official Democratic Party sponsored events that are open to the public. This is where the committee aims to proclaim its openness and inclusiveness in events designed to appeal to the broad swath of contingents within the party. A broad open ground for interested Democrats who didn't make the delegate cutoff and who are not yet alienated enough from the process to seek refuge in Civic Center Park.

For these caucuses, some groups get to meet on Monday and Wednesday, others on Tuesday and Thursday. Monday and Wednesday you get the AAPI Caucus, Black Caucus, Ethnic Coordinated Caucus, First American Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, LGBT Caucus, Rural Caucus, and the Senior Caucus. Tuesday and Thurday feature the Disability Caucus, Faith Caucus, Veterans & Military Families Caucus, Women's Caucus, and the Youth Caucus.

I leave it you to puzzle over why these caucuses were broken up in this way.

This is the landscape in which motivated political junkies nationwide-delegates, activists, and press-must navigate to realize the promise offered by the Democratic National Committee for four days in Denver.

What are the implications of this landscape? Well, the ubiquitous hanging badges provide a clue. Only those with badges are allowed in the Pepsi Center, which means that delegates feeling anti-social can segregate themselves from the non-credentialed rabble. More social delegates can be seen networking outside the Convention Center, exchanging cards, numbers and knick-knacks. And in the protest zone, passes are a rare sight indeed. If being seen by delegates is the main goal of the protestors, seems they're out of luck due to the predetermined lay of the land (Convention Park and the Pepsi Center are in opposite directions from the Convention Center). On the other hand getting the attention of the hordes of press searching for stories seems to be working out pretty well.

This post was written by Bobble, who's in town for reasons unrelated to Awearness or any other blog.

Well, somebody is doing just this. His name is Charles Murray.

There's probably no more reviled social scientist--perhaps no more reviled American writer--than Murray. This hostility has little to do with his work on economics and  welfare policy, and more with the notorious book he co-authored 14 years ago, The Bell Curve, in which he took up the old "nature vs. nurture" debate and firmly came down on the side of nature. In the process, Murray brought into questions many of the basic assumptions of modern education, including that "every child can be anything he or she wants to be if only the schools do their job properly"--what he now calls "educational Romanticism." The Bell Curve quickly sparked much criticism--some of it legitimate, some not.

That Murray would now be arguing that fewer people should be going to college would seem to lend credence to his harshest critics' depiction of him as an elitist, racist, pessimist, and general merchant of doom and gloom.  

Well, Murray is none of these things. And even those who share Michelle Obama's vision of universal higher ed should take a look at Murray's reasoning for his controversial claims, put forth in his new book and a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

First off: What is this vaunted BA anyhow? It's true that without one, it's nigh impossible to get a high-paying job, or even get in the door for a job interview. But then, does this mean that most employers think it necessary that all workers have spent four years of their lives in some Arcadian locale, played a little beer pong, and taken a course on the construction of gender in Milton? Of course not. The BA serves as a kind certification that one was bright enough to "get in" and diligent enough not to flunk out. Not bad. But then for most people, is this college experience really more valuable than working for a couple of years as a manager at a small grocery or doing an apprenticeship with a master electrician? Probably not.

Until about 30 years ago, it was perfectly normal for highly successful people to lack a BA--Harry Truman and Frank Lloyd Wright being two examples among many. But now, with more and more being pushed into higher ed, anyone who didn't graduate from college gets a rap as being stupid or lazy. And thus more and more are willing to take on debt, large loans, and generally waste four years on an educational venture that in itself might not be too valuable. 

Murray's proposals for greater emphasis on skill-certification exams and apprenticeships seems to me the makings of system that's much better suited to average Americans--and much more practical than forcing everyone to attend a bunch of "organic chem" lectures while on a hangover.

In the past year, we've seen how the notion that everyone should own a home (and that the government should subsidize the whole project) has had rather bad unintended consequences and created a lot of pain for middle-class families. Political programs in which more and more Americans are pushed into taking on loans and wasting time would seem to have implications than are no less harmful. And there's nothing elitist or deterministic about pointing out that.   

The decrease is thanks in part to expansion of government coverage of children. Granted, a 1.3 million person -- that's equal to a 0.5 percent difference -- drop isn't that much improvement, but it's a better than nothing.

Unfortunately, there's a downside to this story (as you probably figured). The number of people who have health insurance through their employers fell to 59.3 percent. The peak was 64.2 percent back in 2000. That means that if it weren't for broader governmental coverage, more people would likely be uninsured than ever.

Texas is the state with the greatest number of uninsured residents, while Massachusetts has improved the past two years. Its healthcare reforms were authored by Senator Ted Kennedy, and could be a model for reform at the federal level as well.

[2004 Health Insurance Coverage Status map courtesy of the Rural Assistance Center]

From a logistical standpoint, the Democratic National Convention has thus far proved to be a nightmare on top of a hassle.

First off, my co-blogger and point-person, Liza Sabater, had her phone break. She was incommunicado for the better part of the day.

I then had to find a place to park our rental car, which you can imagine, wasn't easy, given the sudden spike in Denver's population by tens of thousands of people.

Next, it took me several hours to even find the famed "Big Tent," where all of us bloggers were promised WiFi, workspace, and even free food and drink. Every single person I asked for directions to the Big Tent directed me to a place that I could not access because I did not have my pass, which I was told would be waiting for me at the Big Tent. (The guards outside that area wouldn't even acknowledge the impossibility of this Catch 22.)

After a couple hours of pleading, happening upon an anti-abortion protest, and getting a healthy sunburn, I walked a few miles to a large Kinko's to upload photos, and when I got there, they couldn't help me do the job.

I finally reached Liza Sabater, who had been to the Tent already and said it's actually in a different location from the one I'd been directed to, so I commenced to walk the few miles back from Kinko's to get there.

(Did I mention that it's in the low 90s here?)

Upon reaching the Big Tent, I had to fight for space to sit down and begin working. This, my friends, is the blogosphere.

I'm relieved to finally be able to work after spending all day in the heat trying to do something I take for granted in my regular life: getting online and simply doing my work.

My sole consolation in all this comes from knowing that all of these people, and all this chaos, is representative of something great: a massive movement of non-mainstream journalists doing their part to inform, engage, and interact with John Q. Public.

But thanks to blogging, however much chaos it might produce, John Q. Public has a voice too.

[Image Credit: Maria Azzurra Mugnai, from Wikimedia Commons]

I shot this photo outside the Pepsi Center at the Democratic National Convention this afternoon. The gentleman with the sign is a native Brooklynite from Bay Ridge, who was stationed in Denver in 1997. He decided to stay.

He was one of the few protesters I'd seen at this point in my time here in Denver, and he was tremendously civil. He'd positioned himself outside the Pepsi Center to get his idols' autographs.

Not Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or any of the other A-List people at the DNC. He was hoping to meet Sean Hannity. He already realized his dream of meeting Bill O'Reilly.

As conservative protesters go, he was nothing if not pleasant. But I was still surprised to see that almost no one was paying much attention to his sign.

When we got in yesterday, the DNCC had closed shop on issuing credentials for bloggers. Bereft of access the convention center, we went on looking for the Big Tent -- and that was fun trying to find given there are about five different tent areas.

When we got there, it was a blast to the past for me. I covered the 2004 conventions on the outside. I wasn't a credentialed blogger in 2004 so I had to stay at places like The Tank in NYC to cover the Republican Party's convention. The Tent looks A LOT like the The Tank in 2004. Only bigger. I don't think it's a coincidence, considering The Tank in NYC was the place where I ended up meeting an "up and coming" blogger who went by the name Kos and who was the publisher of that "little" activist blog called DailyKos.When he saw me he screamed, "Feels like NYC in 2004, doesn't it?" taking the words out of my mouth.

So we settled down at The Big Tent with about another 100 other bloggers and we watched the broadcast from there.

Even though we weren't inside the convention center, the fun thing about watching an event like this with other bloggers is in the unfiltered comments you get for every single moment of the broadcast as it is happening. So when we were watching the tribute to Senator Kennedy ("Uncle Teddy" to us bloggers), Michael comes to me and says, "that's not a tribute, that's an eulogy." I was shocked to hear that but it made me pay attention to what was happening in the room. Around us, there were more than a few fellow bloggers wiping tears from their eyes.Yet out came the Senator from Massachusetts to give one of the most rousing speeches I've heard him give in years. It was amazing to see him with so much energy, so much enthusiasm. It was truly touching and inspiring and the perfect lead into presenting Michelle Obama.

A lot of my fellow bloggers are voting for Barack Obama and are actually in awe of Michelle. But it was interesting to see so many people remark this was the longest anybody had heard her talk. It was amazing and for lack of electricity and a better photo opportunity, I was taking notes of people's reactions. She hit high notes here and there talking about her growing up in a working class family to go on to Harvard and beyond. She connected with people by relaying her own personal story of the American Dream and many in the room were touched to hear about her father's struggle with multiple sclerosis.

Yet the moments when people really started listening were almost at the end when she spoke about her life with a certain Barack Obama. "The Moment"? She had men in tears when she spoke about how she shares with Barack the commitment of giving their daughters what he never had, the unwavering love of a father.

My friend Chris Rabb, of Afro-netizen fame, was in the room with me and he almost lost it. He's had the pleasure of knowing both Barack and Michelle. He told me afterwards that what we had witnessed was all Michelle. That that was who she was up there, all genuine, all true to herself.

I was incredibly impressed, but more so as after their daughters came out and Sasha, the little Obama, was completely unmoved by being in front of an audience of millions when she called out to her father, "Hi daddy!" It was funny to see Barack completely lose his train of thought. Yet what was more impressive was the way in which both of them, Barack and Michelle, handled the situation.

And that's where the power of a media moment enters this narrative.

When you have a roomful of hardened bloggers wiping away tears and oohing and aahing at the sight of what was basically a family talking to each other over a video link, you know something bigger is happening on that screen. It's not about politics. It's not about elections. It's about creating a completely different narrative of what we want to see daily on those TV and computer screens.

Which is why it was brilliant to have Teddy Kennedy not bidding adieu yet but celebrating the dawning of a new political era.

If y'all remember, 45 years ago a certain Irish Catholic family took the political scene by storm with one son becoming President of the United States and the the other one Senator of New York and later on Attorney General.

At that time it was unheard of to have an Irish and needless to say a Catholic become President of the United States. The Irish were the "white ethnics," the kind of Europeans who were considered in the bottom of the social, political and economic barrel in this country. Very much how blacks and browns are regarded still to this day.

Times have changed. We've gone from "I have a dream" to The New Hope that is Barack Obama the US President nominee for the Democratic Party. Times have changed indeed.

And so I arrive in Denver, the current nerve center of the American political process. Denver, Colorado, where so many of us converge with hopes that our country can somehow be righted and brought to balance by the November 2008 elections. Paid for and flown out by Kenneth Cole Productions, I have been given a chance to access a platform larger than that which I usually use, and while nobody can be sure what this will yield, I strike out with gratitude and the hope that has fueled me so far and the idea that has powered my own blog: a person speaking from the heart and from their experience and awareness adds to an important collective understanding and ongoing dialogue crucial to our social and political process. 

Tonight, not long after my plane arrived, I sat and shared burritos with a couple friends, also bloggers who traveled to Denver. We spoke about what blogging is and how it fits into the current political framework. Are bloggers just people with computers? Are they the new voice of media? Are they a threat to the current norms shaped by institutions of intellectual culture? As you might expect, no well-defined answers were agreed upon, and while a consensus may have been satisfying, the truth is that the ambiguity and nuance of the conversation (and of the definition of what "blogging" might be) was probably as accurate and truthful as you could get. 

I don't know what I hope to accomplish by bringing my body and mind to this event. I don't have pretentious aspirations or self-image in this endeavor. I simply want to see for myself what is happening today with the country in which I was born; I want to tell the truth to my friends and fellow citizens, and I want to hear and see for myself what is going on. In this light, bloggers are nothing more than aware and awake citizens. And if that is the case, then all I can say is, it's about time.

Political reportage involves making decisions. The most basic is this: does one choose to write a piece that is balanced, or one that is objective?

Now, these two terms are too often used interchangeably, which is problematic, given that they are not at all equivalent to one another. This is certainly the case with America's traditional media and its reportage of political matters, in especially as far as our two major parties are concerned in this age of discontent.

At the risk of gross simplification, balance and objectivity respectively represent two schools of thought about describing the world we live in. One is Hegelian, the other Cartesian. Hegelian thought holds that truth is arrived at by proposing a thesis, which is then contrasted with a contradictory anti-thesis, from the reconciliation of which arises the synthesis that incorporates both. This is essentially the model political reportage follows in this country. 

Now, the problem that this presents in our political system is this: while one of our major parties is generally grounded in a universe where observable facts shape policy decisions, the other is not. There is little connection between historical reality and, for example, the idea that tax cuts produce budget surpluses. They do not, and other examples - on the veracity of evolution, on the efficacy of so-called "abstinence education, and so on and wearily on - demonstrate that the Republican Party at a profound level exists in a self-willed universe.

Hence, the problem with balance. When, say, the Democrats propose that higher taxes on the rich will reduce or eliminate the budget deficit, they have some solid empirical ground to stand on. To then, as the traditional media does with disarming silliness, contrast this position with some hare-brained idiocy from the Heritage Foundation claiming otherwise may well be balanced, in that both viewpoints on an issue are presented, but it is not objective - because one of these viewpoints is entirely at odds with what we know to be actually true.

So let's have less balance, and more objectivity.

That's what I asked Awearness co-blogger Liza Sabater very early this morning when she exclaimed, "Is that John Legend?" as we waited to board our flight out of LaGuardia to Denver for the Democratic National Convention here.

I'm pretty unhip when it comes to music today, which I almost hold as a mantle of my age and lack of interest in popular culture, but I'll admit I was a bit embarrassed when she told me.

John Legend, of course, is a famous singer/songwriter and public supporter of Barack Obama. (He was featured in the viral YouTube hit by will.i.am "Yes We Can".)

Not only that, he's got one of the most coveted gigs a young troubadour could ask for: performing the opening night of the convention for tens of thousands of Obama supporters who have converged in the mile-high city to blog, network, or just be part of this epically historic event.

It turns out that Legend was on our flight, with a rather stunning date, and was greeted by an entourage by our flight's baggage claim carousel. A true 21st Century journalist, Liza had her cell phone's video rolling, documenting every second of our trip just in case something interesting happened.

Even I was star-struck for a minute, and as I said, I didn't even know who John Legend was. Why? Because at that moment, it sank in: we're really at the DNC. And John Legend represents the kind of youthful spirit that's driving Obama's campaign. (So youthful that even a 33 year-old like me has to ask who he is.)

But as we'll see in the days to come, Obama represents a lot more than youthful optimism, and his appeal reaches far beyond the MTV generation. That he's as celebrated by so many is just further affirmation of what some pundits were saying back in 2003, when he began campaigning for the US Senate. He truly could be the "great white hope" of the Democratic party.

America Love It Or Fix It 2008

Video By Chris Weller, Max Joseph
Music By Alan Wilkis

In the competition to secure 270 electoral votes, Barry and Johnny are practicing the delicate art of seduction to pick up those coy swing states. An original GOOD Video.

Mercy Corps, according to their web site, "works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against nearly impossible odds." Founded in 1979 by Dan O'Neill, who witnessed the horrors of Idi Amin in Uganda and the terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Mercy Corps has provided about $1.5 billion in assistance to people in more than a hundred nations. The Mercy Corps team has been active in the Georgia-Russian situation, utilizing donations to distribute food and other critical supplies. Mercy Corps is also sponsoring "Take Note," a the first annual fundraising gala "Music For Mercy Corps" which will be hosted by Sarah Silverman to benefit the Mercy Corps organization on Saturday, August 23rd at the Tuscan Villa in The Hamptons. The event is to raise funds for Mercy Corps' Action Center to End World Hunger in Darfur. The highest profile celebrity items being auctioned is a walk on role in the next Robert Zemeckis movie (the current bid is $9,000).

It's not just about donations, although those help. Mercy Corps is also looking for graduate and undergraduate student interns looking "to apply your education to hands-on projects that contribute to Mercy Corps' efforts to end world poverty." More on Internships here.

[Image: GBGM-UMC]

As a globally traded commodity, oil has always been monitored, fought over, and shared by people who have little in common beyond their mutual need for black gold.

The same is true for food, and now that many of our staple crops are becoming prohibitively expensive due to drought, hoarding, and free market trade policies, we're on the cusp of an era marked by the same kind of violence and terror that's all-too-common in the world of oil.

This month's Atlantic offers these alarming facts:

Since 2007, riots and protests over food prices have broken out in 30 countries.

The American supermarkets Costco and Sam's Club limited the amount of rice each shopper could buy in a single trip.

Haiti's prime minister was ejected from office because of the spike in food prices, and Malaysia's government is equally unstable for the same reason.

Last year, the US government reduced soybean acreage by 16 percent to avail more space for corn and ethanol production, causing the price of soy oil to rise by 40 percent and a subsequent domino effect: other vegetable oils quickly became more expensive because of simple supply-and-demand economics, the price of tofu skyrocketed, and a senior Indonesian official expressed publicly his concern that such a pattern could result in a government overthrow in that country.

In the Philippines, the government created an Anti-Rice Hoarding Task Force to find hoarders of the grain and punish them with life sentences for "economic sabotage" and "plunder."

The upshot is simple: While there once was plenty, but not shared equally around the world, now there's lack. And as the world becomes more and more desperate for simple food, it will inevitably become more fraught with violence and political upheaval.

If this scares you, it should. We're at a crisis point, and the least we can do is live and eat with prudence and a conscientious mind to all of mankind. We're in this together, after all.

[Image Credit: Herr Stahlhoefer]

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Six foreigners, all believed to be Americans associated with Students for a Free Tibet, were detained after protests in Beijing earlier this week. Today news came that the protesters had been sentenced to 10 days in jail, rather than deported as has been the more standard practice during the Olympics.

Among the detainees is James Powderly, founder of the Graffiti Research Lab. He hoped to use a "laser stencil" to draw "FREE TIBET" on the side of a Beijing building -- but before he could, he was arrested by Chinese police when he and other protesters held up an LED sign with the same message within view of "The Nest." The banner was only seen for about 20 seconds.

Brian Conley, of the popular Alive in Baghdad videoblog, was also detained and is believed to be demonstrated in Beijing's "Ethnic Park," where a large exhibit on Tibetan culture is on display (video here).

Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama said he'd received word today that Chinese troops fired on demonstrators Tibet and some people may have been killed -- possibly as many as 140. All of this comes as the Olympic Games give China a huge opportunity to show a positive face to the world; these crackdowns are a smudge that will be difficult to hide.

To launch our latest "WE ALL WALK IN DIFFERENT SHOES" campaign, we're sending out some teaser films to celebrate those individuals who have the courage to redefine their roles in society. There are three teaser films in total and they've be added to the AWEARNESS Blog over the past few weeks. Here is the third.

If you would like to view the other teaser videos from "WE ALL WALK IN DIFFERENT SHOES" please click here to view Teaser 1 and Teaser 2.

When I think of greeting cards I think of waste -- all that paper, all that cliche. Hallmark Business Expressions, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards Inc., recently announced a line of green holiday greeting cards that's making me rethink my initial thoughts on the subject. The nine eco-friendly cards are made from from 50 percent sugar cane pulp and 50 percent recycled paper. "Businesses can truly make a lasting impression this holiday season with these business holiday cards while reflecting their company values," said Marc Wagenheim, product marketing director for Hallmark Business Expressions. "We are pleased to provide the opportunity to collaborate with our customers to be responsible stewards of the planet."

Hallmark, the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the US., is not alone in this emerging trend. Independent greeting card manufacturers are getting in on the act as well. From Sustanableisgood: "Brynne Cogorna, owner of Backward Prints is one such innovator. 'I started an eco-friendly greeting card line using paper that is tree-free and grows flowers once watered and planted.'" And GoodHumans also has Grow-A-Note greeting cards. "The perfect way to send a heartfelt thank you to someone special! Besides your note, each grow-a-note seed embedded card is a gift that can be planted."

There's nothing cliche about that.

[Image: GoodHumans]

This summer Samsung introduced a new cell-phone made out of corn. This new "green" phone won a green label from the Korea Eco-Products Institute, making it the first Korean handset to carry the official designation. This quickly impressed the media with its message: that devices traditionally made from toxic materials could be made more ecologically, i.e., with stuff that will bio-degrade and won't pollute our landfills.

But how "green" is "green" really? Yes, the phone itself might be eco-friendly, but bioplastics made from corn require special recycling methods, which make extremely inefficient use of energy and pose their own environmental problems.

And what about the industry that goes into producing the phones? A phone like this only increases our reliance on corn, which is proved to be among our most problematic crops. Not only does it require an enormous amount of space to grow, farmland that could be more effectively used for grains and soybeans, but its by-products are among our most damaging: namely, corn syrup and ethanol.

Corn syrup, of course, is the main ingredient in many soft drinks and candies, making it a leading culprit in the rise in national obesity and type-2 diabetes. And growing corn for ethanol has been suggested to pose great harm to our water supply.

I say the folks at Samsung are on the right track, but they should sharpen their pencils and return to the R&D lab. A non-plastic cell-phone is a wonderful idea, but does it need to be made out of corn?

[Image Credit: Jamie Lantzy from Wikimedia Commons]

[Image Credit: Iraqi Exodus - Production Diary III: A Family Still Torn Apart by War - Tania Rahkmanova]

The Green Night of programming will air this week on the Sundance Network with 3 all new episodes. The night will kick off at 9pm with It's Not Easy Being Green, episode 4, where "James meets Maggie Staffordshire who is renovating her 1930s house in a thoroughly eco-friendly fashion, re-using original fixtures and as many eco-friendly materials as possible. Dick and James come to the aid of Julie Mason and her partner Harry, who want to boost their energy efficiency with a solar hot water heater."

An all new television premiere, entitled Ice Breaker will air at 9:35pm and is directed by Jody Shapiro and David Best. "This Canadian documentary takes us aboard the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Henry Larson for the ship's annual Arctic tour of duty in summer 2004. With a mission to escort cargo ships and tankers through some of the most dangerous waters on the planet, the Henry Larson embarks from Newfoundland for a 42-day tour that leads it towards ever-denser expanses of ice."

Big Ideas for a Small Planet will air at 10:35pm with an episode entitled FASHION. In this episode, "environmental consciousness has hit the fashion world in a big way; from T-shirts and jeans to haute couture, style is coming to mean sustainable fabric and earth-friendly manufacturing practices. Now, green is coming to the store model and dry cleaners too."

I shot this photograph during the naturalization ceremony on July 4, 2008 at Monticello, the historic home of Thomas Jefferson. President George W. Bush was interrupted about a half dozen times during his 10-minute speech by protesters.and I shot this photo from the media riser reserved for non-pool media.

The protesters' shouting turned Bush's speech from a standard welcome speech to a primer on first amendment rights for those being naturalized. The various protesters were warned once then escorted off the property by Monticello staff; they compared it to removing an unruly fan at a baseball game. The protesters said their piece and accurately reflected the unpopularity of this administration and were not tortured or killed for their views.

Protesters are nothing new, but this level of loud, raucous dissent at a non-political event speaks volumes to this president's unpopularity. I felt that instead of telling this story with a photograph of Bush holding a small, freshly naturalized child waving and smiling to the crowd a photograph of a protester told a deeper story.

I've been drawn to political journalism because of protest and dissent my entire adult life. It is always amazing to me when normal citizens feel so moved one way or the other to abandon the bureaucracy and communicate with their government by yelling and civil disobedience.

First Book is a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. We provide an ongoing supply of new books to children participating in community-based mentoring, tutoring, and family literacy programs.

As the world is distracted by Russia's unimpeded incursion into Georgia, the Sudanese are using the geopolitical pandemonium as cover to launch assaults on rebel-held areas of North Darfur. Rebel leaders are alleging that the military action was undertaken to clear space for Chinese oil exploration. And while that little chestnut didn't make A1 above-the-fold of The New York Times this week, Mia Farrow -- God bless her for her vigilance on this issue -- is on it and on the ground in Darfur, fighting on the side of the angels.

"Broadcasting" from a refugee camp in Darfur, Farrow has been blogging and participating-promoting The Darfur Olympics, and today, Friday August 15th was its eighth and final day. Farrow is using her "soft power" as a celebrity to call attention to what is being pushed to the margins of the news cycle by Russia and Georgia and Kashmir and Afghanistan and (of course) Beijing. From DreamforDarfur:

"The Darfur Olympics has been a 7-day demonstration to provide for the people of Darfur to receive some attention during China's extravagant celebration of itself as Olympic host.

"The demonstration featured an alternative opening ceremony on August 8, a daily webcast by Mia Farrow from a refugee camp (August 9 to 14), and an online action aimed at the Olympic Corporate sponsors. The Chinese government blocked access in Beijing to Dream for Darfur's websites.

"The closing ceremony features footage of life in a refugee camp juxtaposed with images of Chinese propaganda.

"'The images from the refugee camps show the anguish China underwrites, even as Beijing tries to present a different image to the world. China was not able to escape its murderous record in Darfur during these Games,' said Jill Savitt, Founder and Director of Dream for Darfur. 'Now that China's role in Darfur is well known to all the world, we will increase pressure on Beijing in the coming months to address the crisis.'"

For a brief period of time between the moment the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court asked for an arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir for genocide and the Moscow-Georgia contretamps, things appeared to be quieting down in Sudan. Chastened, the Sudanese government slowed the pace of their oil-influnced genocide. That, alas, is no longer the case.

[Image: Bonnit]

So many political speeches sound so much alike, you could probably recite some of their main passages by heart. And in fact, if that sounds like fun to you, here's your outlet.

Politaoke is touring the nation, letting everyday citizens take their turn at the podium reading actual speeches off the monitor, karaoke style, just like actual politicians. Thought up by artist Diana Arce, Politaoke is intended to draw attention to the words, not just the soundbites and applause points. The selections are bipartisan, pulling from both Dem and GOP politicians (maybe even Nader? I don't know), edited into "songs" 1 to 8 minutes long. Debates, interviews and television appearances serve as "duets."

Says Arce on her YouTube page, "Politicians are actors, deliverers of words cleverly written by high paid political scientists working as speech writers sent to them via teleprompters. Other times they are professional improvisers, stringing together the current events jargon into sound bits and phrases that are perfect for being cut into newspapers, radio shows and television. But their words, whether powerful, ridiculous or down right wrong, belong to us. Politaoke provides the audience a platform to perform, mock and finally hear and see clearly what their politicians say."

Convention Karaoke, an allied project, will bring the fun to the Democratic National Convention, taking over several venues around Denver to give locals an opportunity to own a piece of the convention. If you'll be in town, check out the venue list here and download a speech to rehearse.

To launch our latest "WE ALL WALK IN DIFFERENT SHOES" campaign, we're sending out some teaser films to celebrate those individuals who have the courage to redefine their roles in society. There are three in total and they'll be posted here over the next few weeks. Here is the second.

López Lomong, the flag bearer for the US Olympic delegation embodies some of the most contentious and even violent political struggles happening around the world and even the United States. Just by looking at his Wikipedia page, you can immediately find out why he's causing such a sensation : He is a true Cinderella story.

He was one of the 3,000 lost boys of Sudán who survived abduction, war and internment camp. His story is heart breaking. He was taken away one Sunday morning from church at the age of 6. He was able to escape from the guerrilla camp were they were being trained albeit fed literally sand sandwiches. He lived 10 years in what the UN calls a refugee camp but for those living in it was almost as bad as a concentration camp. He remained there until the day he was able to write his story and have two willing adoptive parents in the United States to take him in not only as one of their own, but five other Lost Boys as well.

The video you have here is of Barbara and John Rogers, the upstate New York couple who found a 16 year old Lopez Lomong through Catholic Charities in Kenya. This couple, inspired by their Catholic faith have been able to show Lopez and all their other boys the path from hopelessness and despair to health, safety, education and hope.

And for one of those lost boys, the dream of a lifetime : To become an Olympic athlete.

Video By Chris Weller, Max Joseph, Danielle Flug

If we're addicted to oil, our twelve-step program should begin with admitting that we have a problem. As the price of oil creeps higher, finding new energy sources is more important than ever. But the search for alternatives, combined with environmental disruptions, is putting new pressures on other essentials like food. There are some things that are going well in the world. Right now, the economy is not one of them.

Why? In a word: cars.

Older neighborhoods -- that is, pre-1950 -- were built with walkability in mind. Newer neighborhoods, including most of America's suburban sprawl, were built for its opposite: driveability.

The study found that for each additional decade in a neighborood's age, the rate of obesity is 13 percent lower among men, and eight percent among women. It also found that the average 200-pound man standing six feet is 10 pounds lighter if he lives in a older enclave than if he lived in a newer one.

This is largely why I live in Brooklyn: I hate driving. But when I leave my home borough, where I walk about two miles per day just to get around -- not counting the walking I do when I go into Manhattan --  my daily exercise is limited to my more intentional running regimen. At my parents' house, in Illinois, I will spend days without walking further than the driveway, where the car is parked.

And I'm not a lazy person; it's simply that where my parents live, you're putting your life on the line every time you take a stroll. Cars wiz by without any mind to pedestrians, and there's absolutely nothing -- and I mean nothing -- to look at.

It's a shame that our modern developments aren't more amenable to walkers, and they seem to be getting less so by the year. Is it too much to ask that we protest, and demand more walkable communities for ourselves and our families? After all, aren't we the ones who have to live in them?

[Image Credit: Julia Adamson, from Wikimedia Commons]

The fear of a personal assault doesn't keep us off the streets, and the fear of a fatal car accident doesn't keep us off the roads, but what is it about the fear of sharks that keeps us out of the water; obsessed collectively and traumatized individually?

Earlier this summer, the island of Martha's Vineyard, where I was vacationing ( which was fictionalized as Amity Island in the movie Jaws) cleared the beaches because a man told police he had spotted two great white sharks from his fishing boat.

Newspapers and local TV stations gave it blanket coverage, and terrified beachgoers stayed out of the water. When it was all said and done, the sighting turned out to be a hoax.

Is the response rational? Consider that every year in America, nearly four million people are assaulted, somewhere around 40,000 die in car accidents, and less than one person - on average - is killed by a shark attack. Interestingly in the case of the Martha's Vineyard scare, there have been only three recorded shark attacks in the history of the state of Massachusetts (the last of which was in 1936), and nobody died.

I am reminded of a conversation I had in September of 2001.

We were getting set for the Kenneth Cole fashion show, during New York's fashion week. NBC had agreed to broadcast it live, which was a big deal. As a condition for their broadcast, though, we had to build a runway, hire the models, and incur a lot of other costs that were going to run the company north of $1 million. That said, we thought the exposure would be well worth the investment.

As we were about to construct a tent in Rockefeller Plaza, and commit to other irrevocable costs, we made a last minute call to the producers, and asked for assurance that there would be no chance that anything else in the news would "knock us off the air". Nothing, I was told. Except he said, half seriously, "Maybe a shark attack on Jones Beach."

The show went off fine, and we were all pleased, and we couldn't wait for the next day's coverage. However, the date of our show was September 10th, 2001, and the next day, September 11th. All programming ceased completely, and wouldn't restart until several days later, broadcasting into a changed world.

So what is it that paralyzes us about terrorists (a real threat, although remote) and sharks (a perceived threat)?

I guess that when we drive cars, roam the streets, and even smoke cigarettes (418,000 deaths a year), we consider the calculated risks, and can control them by controlling our actions, as opposed to the random nature of sharks and terrorist attacks.

We like being in control, and we like understanding the risks and likely outcome of our various endeavors. We're not likely to be paralyzed by fear if aware of the probable outcome.

The conclusion being, as I have often said, to be aware is even more important than what you wear.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it (for now).

- Kenneth

[image: Jaws: Panic on the Beach, via Wikipedia]

I have always had a passion for current affairs and politics. This passion led me to pursue a university degree in Politics and I enjoyed serving as President of my university's Student Union. But what I have always enjoyed most is activism and campaigning on social, political and environmental issues.

One of the issues I feel most passionate about is anti-racism. So when this summer I went to the annual Rise music festival in London -which always had anti-racism as it's main theme. I was very disappointed to learn that the emphasis of the festival this year was on cultural diversity and not anti-racism. Nothing wrong of course per se with cultural diversity, but stripped from its anti-racism message, this unique music festival had become just like any other music festival.

The nature of the festival was result of the election of the new London Mayor, Boris Johnson, who had his own reasons for the change. Nevertheless many found his decision baffling. So walking among the festival and taking pictures, I was very happy to find a group of people dancing under a homemade placard which read "Still Rising Agains Racism". It is a simple picture - but it is a picture I am proud of - and it is the best picture I took that day.

Below are the continuations of the Politickled evening in New York City:

Part 5: Is McCain a war hero or a war survivor?

Part 6: Does political satire have power?

You can watch Parts 1 & 2 of the Politickled evening here and Parts 3 & 4 here.

A few weeks ago in Houston President Bush -- not wholly irrelevant yet, alas -- said with regards to the embattled American economy, "Wall Street got drunk -- that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover." He wasn't far off the mark. The Ancient Greeks had a complicated word, "Thumos," which referred to the aggressive-ambitious part of the soul or psyche. Twentysomethings right out of college and on the make, for example, have loads of Thumos.

So does Wall Street.

Thumos, in proper measure, is good. Thumos, or the thumotic urge, in proper measure is indispensable to the well-lived life -- it is the wind in the wayfarer's sails -- allowing the individual to achieve his or her well-planned ideals. Of late we have all had to drink in the atmosphere of Empire, of unmitigated Thumos, of cowboy diplomacy and excessive CEO compensations way out of proportion to the salaries of their workers. In the wake of those imbalanced atmospherics of, for lack of a better word, "irrational exuberance, 2.0," people were encouraged to live beyond their means -- which, of course, doesn't let them off the hook on those hot-headed decisions -- for short-term benefit of those homeowners and those unscrupulous moneylenders, who probably have specially reserved seating in that hot place Dante wrote about. Empires, to be sure, are always overheated as they draw to a scorching conclusion. And speaking of heat, wasn't it Gore Vidal who applied the Second Law of Thermodynamics to the American political system?

Will things cool down in the future? Perhaps the rise of the Green MBA's, promoting courses promoting environtmenal responsibility, sustainability, renewable energy, may be perceived by historians of the future as a corrective moment, a pendulum swing towards the cool center away from the scorching-excesses of Imperial polarity. The most popular story, by the way, on the most excellent Greenbiz (hat tip to Marketwatch for the tip) is a story called "The New Green Focus for Future MBAs" by Padma Nagappan:

"In a few short years, eco-friendly practices have gone from being new-fangled selling points to becoming essential requirements, with states vying with each other to offer incentives and legislation that promote green technology and business. While the corporate world is scrambling to devise strategies to address sustainability, business schools across the country have been incorporating it into their curriculum for the past several years, both in response to student demand and in line with industry trends.

" ... MBA students graduating from these progressive schools will receive a solid grounding in environmental issues. These futuristic programs will prepare them for the reality of tomorrow's markets by equipping them with the social, environmental and economic perspectives required for business success in a competitive and fast changing world."

The Aspen Institute actually rates the Top 100 Green MBAs internationally here.

[Image: [GreenLivingOnline]

Last Friday, Wal-Mart executives warned its store's managers that an impending labor bill, backed by Barack Obama, would make it easier for Wal-Mart employees to unionize, and thereby undermine the managers' ability to exercise control over their hours and wages.

And while Wal-Mart claims it is not -- and never has -- telling anyone how to vote, the message is clear enough: Vote for Obama, and you'll be sorry.

The warning is reminiscent of the company's 2006 "voter education" program, in which Terry Nelson, political director for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, was hired by Wal-Mart to "inform" its 1.3 American employees about political issues.

According to the anti-Wal-Mart Website wakeupwalmart.com, the CEO himself has lamented that it "takes unions for the company to do right by its employees," yet in its 48-year history, Wal-Mart has done everything to thwart any efforts among those employees to do just that.

[Image Credit: Arthur Jacob, from Wikimedia Commons]