TARGET: women & young people
40 million women did not vote in the last election. Wow. That number is larger than the number of residents in the state of California.
Yesterday, Oprah hosted a "vote party" on her show. She had the A-list of Hollywood's engaged there - Cameron Diaz, Sean P-Diddy Combs & Drew Barrymore. The focus was on getting women & young voters to understand the importance to vote.
Quotable
Here are some quotes from the show:
- "If women alone voted, they could decide the next election." - Drew Barrymore
- "I've been discouraged with the 2-party system ..." said an Oprah audience member, to which Oprah replied "So you just thought you'd back out of the whole thing?"
- Political campaigns are not designed for (young people), they are designed for 70s year olds - but 70 years olds vote." - Jon Stewart
- "Listening to the candidates like listening to Telemundo & not speaking Spanish." - P-Diddy
Organziations targeted at getting the minority vote moblilizedFor more on Drew Barrymore's youth vote mobilization project, watch "
The Best Place to Start" tomorrow on MTV at 9 a.m. CST (10 EST).
history of blogging meets this blog
Chuck Olsen, a filmographer known for his documentaries on blogs, just posted a "History of Blogs" movie (.mov). The short piece talks about the history of blogging most of us know about (Blogger, LiveJournal) ... but then steps back into time to people just like the bloggers in this little corner of the net.
The original bloggers weren't bloggers because they had a computer a Blogger account. They were bloggers in spirit because they had something to say & a desire to communicate their ideas:
"Our very democracy was founded upon personal political writing intended to inform, motivate and bring like-minded people together to act. But somewhere along the line, mass media took over for the voice of the people."
And so today, with the other several million bloggers out there - we take our voices back. In this blog we discuss a topic important to us - minority issues - because we feel there is still room to have our voices heard.
faces of supporters
Everyone talks about how the campaigns are courting minority voters. But what does this really mean? Are they going to areas with a dense population of minorities? Are they talking about the issues important to minorities? Are they posting pictures of minority supporters?
In an effort to understand the face of the campaigns, I went to each candidate's Web site photo gallery today to see which faces made the cut to be included from the campaign events (Bush, Kerry). After all, these are the faces were are supposed to connect with & say "that person looks just like me & she supports him ..."
So how did they do? Overall, both candidates receive high marks for minority representation in their photo galleries.
- Kerry had more pictures with African Americans & seniors featured
- Bush had more pictures of women featured
- Kerry had more "group shots" of supporters increasing the opportunity for diversity
- Bush's pictures were more concentrated on smaller groups than Kerry's
Suggestions for improvements?
Don't make me go to your silly photo gallery - where are the minorities on the front pages? Only John Kerry had minorities (women, African American, seniors) on his front page ... & even then they were mixed in a crowd. Don't show me I'm just another face in the crowd, take the time to concentrate on me.
Overall, the Hispanic and Asian representations were next to nothing. Come on now, we have more minorities than just women, seniors, & African Americans. Let's diversify this definition of diversity.
welcome to our community project
The great thing about blogs is that they give a ‘voice to the people.’ This election cycle in the United States, the people want to be heard. Our collective voices will help shed light on minority issues being covered by the candidates & the media – as well as those not being covered.
Who are we? We are a group of young citizen journalists in Louisiana who have come together to cover the election from this perspective.
Minorities can be people of different races, gender or sexual orientation. We don’t discriminate in our definition. Here you’ll find us compiling a non-partisan view of the election so you can decide which candidate best represents the minority issues you believe in.
And so, this is our ‘community project.’ Only, our community isn’t confined to our city or even our state. Our community is the nation. We hope that this project will serve that community by providing a non-partisan examination of minority issues in this election.
