US Government About to Control Internet

Great article about what our patriarchal society is trying to get passed now. See the rest of the article here



(Excerpt)

President of Less Government and editor-in-chief of StopNetRegualtion.org, Seton Motley explained it this way,

“The godfather of the media reform movement, a man by the name of Robert McChesney, said [net] neutrality does not commandeer control of the Internet,” [Motley cites.] “‘We’re not at the point yet,’ he actually uses that sentence, ‘but the ultimate objective is to eradicate the media capitalists from the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.’”

“At which point, they will be rationing bandwidth, just like ObamaCare will result in rationing of healthcare. And when that happens, if they’re choosing websites that get bandwidth, and they’re choosing between Daily Kos [and] MoveOn.org vs. National Review and American Spectator, who’s the government going to choose?”

First of all, you should realize just how deceptive this new FCC regulation is. They refer to it as net neutrality when in fact it is anti-neutrality. It’s like getting people to drink poison by calling it Kool-Aid. The name sounds safe but the contents will kill you.

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What really lies behind all of this? Is our government really trying to control the internet? Don't they control everything else? Pretty soon it will be like Farenheit 451 when Big Brother is watching everything you do at all times and you are killed or punished for initiating anything that would allow you to know more than the government feels you should.

Do black tech entrepreneurs face institutional bias?

San Francisco (CNN) -- Wayne Sutton has been asking venture-capital investors and Silicon Valley executives a question that's not often broached here in the epicenter of the technology industry:
"Why aren't there more black people in tech?"


Black Entrepreneur bias?
Soledad O'Brien is chronicling the NewMe Accelerator journey in "Black in America: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley," airing Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.

The vast majority of top executives at the leading Silicon Valley tech firms are white men. Women and Asians have made some inroads, but African-American and Latino tech leaders remain a rarity. About 1% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of last year are black, according to a study by research firm CB Insights.

This lack of diversity in Silicon Valley made headlines last month when influential tech blogger Michael Arrington, in an interview for CNN's upcoming documentary "Black in America: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley," said, "I don't know a single black entrepreneur." Arrington later recanted the statement, saying he was caught off guard by the question, but the sensitive issue sparked a public dispute between the newly minted venture capitalist and CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

NewMe co-founder Wayne Sutton, center, works on his laptop at a coffee shop with fellow entrepreneurs.

It's an issue that Sutton, who co-founded the NewMe Accelerator for under-represented minorities in the tech industry and is also building a software company, has been grappling with for months.

NewMe is an incubator program formed to help minorities launch Internet ventures. For two months last summer, Sutton and seven other black entrepreneurs worked together in a rented house in Mountain View, California, where they got advice from successful executives and pitched their startup ideas to investors.

The venture capitalists, including business-software designer Mitch Kapor, told them the struggles of blacks in the tech industry might be attributed to a concept called "pattern matching," which is prevalent in venture-capital circles and yet alien to the rest of the business world.

"Silicon Valley really likes to think of itself as a meritocracy," Kapor said. In fact, "the general state of Silicon Valley is completely backwards," he said.
A true meritocracy?

Pattern matching comes from a computer-science exercise in which a system looks for common attributes within reams of data. Its companion is pattern recognition, a term that some investors use interchangeably but which describes a less precise method.
In the business of investing, pattern matching defines a technique for figuring out which human traits, corporate makeup and financial projections are the foundations for the next Facebook or other big Internet success. The criteria can include a founder's track record, personality type and alma mater, which market the company is targeting and how its peers are performing, and how quickly the business is expected to grow and begin collecting revenue. Commonly, these successful founders are white computer-science graduates of Stanford University or a similar elite school.

Many of the top venture-capital firms use some form of pattern matching, but no two use precisely the same data sets. The firms typically don't disclose what exactly goes into their formulas because they see their patterns as trade secrets.
But Sutton's NewMe co-founder, Angela Benton, wonders whether pattern matching, which critics say favors the status quo over change, is a veiled form of racism.
"I was offended by it," said Benton, who is also starting a company, in an interview with CNN. "I'm black. I'm a woman. I have kids. I might as well go home."
People familiar with the pattern-matching process say race is not explicitly a factor, nor is gender.

"Most VCs I know pride themselves on the idea that to be a good investor, you have to learn those skills," said Cindy Padnos, who founded a venture capital firm called Illuminate Ventures. Her company says in its creed, "We don't rely on 'pattern recognition.'"

NewMe founders Angela Benton, left, and Wayne Sutton discuss their project.
"I have no doubt that most of what we see happening in the high-tech community is completely unintentional bias, and yet, we all have to recognize (that) unintentional or not, we are all born with it," Padnos said. "Undoubtedly, the unintentional bias comes into play when they look at the 15 (startups) they did (invest in) and the five that succeeded big-time, when the ones that succeeded were led by white males. That somehow seeps into the equation."
Race still a factor?

These methods don't necessarily explain why so few blacks, Latinos and women lead tech companies when compared to the number of white-male execs.
Padnos and her venture firm have researched and advocated for hiring and funding more tech companies led by women. She says she has strived to diversify her 40-person advisory committee and her relatively small investment portfolio, but neither has an African-American.

High-placed female execs like Google's Marissa Mayer and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg have advocated on their own for women, and women continue to break into the top executive ranks. Their recent successes, and the rise of Chinese and Indian tech leaders, could provide a model for other minorities in the United States who are hitting roadblocks in their quests to start Internet companies, industry experts say.
But their hard-earned victories have not come easily.

"We live in a society where race is still a factor," said Rey Ramsey, an African-American man who runs a political lobbying firm for the tech industry called TechNet. Referencing Facebook's famous young founder,he added, "We're waiting for the black Zuckerberg."

A few standout black leaders have emerged in tech over the years, said Charles Moore, an African-American who founded Rocket Lawyer, a startup that offers online legal documents and advice. He cited Frank Greene, a pioneering semiconductor engineer turned venture capitalist who died in 2009, and Charles Phillips Jr., the former Oracle co-president, as inspirations.

"Race has not really been a factor in a material way in my career," said Moore, whose company is backed by Google Ventures, the search giant's venture capital arm. "I think that Silicon Valley is a place where you can work hard and be smart and have some luck, which everybody needs. And if you have those things, you can succeed, regardless of your race or gender or other demographic profile."
Data-driven investing Google Ventures has extolled the virtues of its data-driven approach to investing, in which it draws patterns from past home runs. For example, the firm has learned, as it told the New York Times in July, that successful entrepreneurs are more likely to create the spark again and that startups located far from the offices of their investors are more likely to succeed.

"Traditionally, the venture business is highly driven by qualitative assessments," said Bill Maris, Google Ventures' managing partner, recently at a conference. "We're trying to also look quantitatively, and apply some data tools and metrics around some questions that make natural sense to us to try and look at."
A longtime venture capitalist, who declined to speak on the record, said pattern matching, when applied correctly, is designed to spot the rare talent that may hit it big, not promote sameness. It has nothing to do with race, he said.
Many of the top venture firms have said publicly that they use pattern matching to identify potentially successful startups. But when contacted by CNN, they were reluctant to talk about it. Spokespeople for several high-profile venture firms, including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, did not return requests for comment on this story.

Ben Horowitz, who founded his venture firm with Marc Andreessen, wrote on his blog last year that he understands the value of pattern matching, which allows investors to "recognize patterns of strategy and behavior that generally work, and patterns that generally fail," although he thinks it has limits.
Sequoia Capital's Michael Moritz has said that age is a factor his firm considers when deciding who to invest in.

New Venture Partners, a New Jersey-based firm with an office in Silicon Valley, uses pattern matching, said partner Daniel Deeney in an interview. But race is not a factor, he said, and several companies New Venture has invested in have black leaders. He said New Venture's investments tend to go into the telecom industry, where AT&T, Lucent and others have fostered corporate diversity programs that have fostered minority-led startups.

A racial divide with no clear explanation
Little research has been done on the topic of race in the tech industry. Some observers, including Ramsey, wonder whether the lack of racial diversity can be blamed on hiring practices at tech juggernauts such as Apple, Facebook and Google, none of which cooperated with a request by CNNMoney for employee diversity statistics.

"The tech industry is pretty clubby," said Hank Williams, an African-American entrepreneur in the NewMe program who had success in the Internet boom of the 1990s. "There are really no people of color in Silicon Valley."
Others say the issue could be rooted deep within the black community. The NewMe co-founders said African-American families don't typically encourage business leaders or programmers to pursue interests in tech.

"The African-American community is like, 'Oh, nobody is going to give you money to make a website,'" Sutton said. "It's almost like stupid, or not cool."
Still others, like the founder of Kapor Capital, say risk-aversion within venture capital stifles changes in the demographics of entrepreneurs chosen to be financed.
"African-American candidates are much more likely not to match the pattern," said Kapor, who hosted NewMe's demo day at his office. "To recognize the truth is to accept that the winners at the top did so through a rigged game."

His wife, Freada Kapor Klein, a longtime adviser to tech firms on racial diversity in employment, believes people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds can solve problems with technology that others can't because of perspectives learned during their upbringings. Firms that recognize this, she said, should have an edge on less open-minded rivals.

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The special mentioned in the article is coming on CNN tonight which I plan on watching. I watch all the CNN Specials on Black in America as well as Latin in America with Soledad O'Brien. This isn't an old issue. There are many occupations that are white dominated as well have higher salaries. There are more people of color with degrees from higher education institutions now than in recent decades. There seems to be a bias in more than just the technical field in regards to the disparity between races. I'll report back more after I watch the special. I just thought this was a very interesting article. I think this encompasses beliefs about race, class and even gender. The technical field is also highly male dominated as well.

Scribbled Thoughts of Class

As I stated in class this week, it seems unfair and critical to judge the worth of an individual's life, family, dreams and goal merely because of their perceived "class." There is so much we don't know and cannot fathom about someone's life just because of societal stereotypes or adopted norms attributed to certain classes of people.

The most interesting thing I noticed about each piece we read, is that they all came from the perspective of working class women and their experiences in the world. I wonder if a working class man would see the world from a much different perspective, maybe even a perspective that held more power, promise and inside information to the way the world works --- maybe even in favor of working class men. Working class men are in the same class as women yet have different opportunities afforded to them.

For each author, the most important factor in their ability to "survive rather than live" and "smile" came from the strength they received from their familial ties. Growing up they drew from the unwavering pride and creative capabilities of their families who in the outside world were seen as intellectual inferiors, but were the very threads that held their family and personal lives together with determination. It may be difficult for an outsider to look in and see their struggles as anything but something to reflect upon sadly, but through each voice, each word, I felt a sense of appreciation and admiration the women had for their working class upbringing. Granted, they were unsure in the world at times growing up and out of their working class families to go to college and travel the world, but they never forgot where they came from and had instilled upon them the belief of hard work, pride, dedication and respect for life.

The hardest to believe, but most repetitive ideal I noticed, was either their hope to be invisible (at a young age) to others who had "class freedom" or their desire to be seen despite feeling invisible to professors, peers who had come from middle or upper class backgrounds and others they encountered who held some sort of esteem. For one author, she couldn't decide if she should shout on the train that her clothes underneath her expensive coat(bought on credit) were really from the Salvation Army. The distinction that those without make about class was well put by author Terri Griffith: Class is about more than money; it's about safety and security, knowing that what you have today, you will have tomorrow.

Growing up without or on the edge of going without (constantly) creates a mental stress that even if you get older and have more than enough, you fear you might have nothing the next day. Middle and upper class constituents assume what they have, they always will. Perhaps, that is why it's that much harder for them to bounce back if by some chance of fate they lose it all. They aren't built to accept or expect failure. On one hand, that can sound negative, but it actually helps build a stronger character that not only can withstand troubles, but is able to think on his/her own feet when needed and survive.

Combining the ability to survive with the will to live and be able to live comfortably is essentially what would level out the playing field. In fact, it's the ideal that most working class people live by. The wealthy aspire to maintain and increase wealth, while those less fortunate would be happy with enough to live comfortably and be able to enjoy themselves if desired. The notion that working class and poor people don't have dreams, goals or aspirations is false. Rather, what they endure and are presented through political and social structures are brick walls to ensure they don't "dream too big" and remain where they are. For some, that provides the fuel to get out while for others it's simply confirmation that what they are is all they will ever be.

It was empowering to read the beauty and hardship simultaneously of all four women, regardless of race, having similar "class" experiences although, I related most with Meliza Banales, who wrote the Poet and The Pauper. I am also an aspiring poet and writer who has been told by many that my writings about race, class, gender and sexuality are not things that people want to read about. Yet, as she noted, those who wrote about trees and other obscure things are published regularly. When she spoke of the "smile" that people of color give to White people in authority, I felt as if she was letting out a secret membership tactic. All my life, my mother taught me to "smile" and not lash out at the rude, inconsiderate, racist and downright obnoxious things that White people in positions of power would say to her or me so as not to reduce my chances of mobility within the workplace. I've worked in mainly White dominated places of employment where if I was lucky there might be one other person of color and if there was one, they were always in competition with me to be the "better minority." In making us compete, we were never allowed to truly be friends or identify with one another because we were both trying to climb the rungs of the societal ladder that would give us the financial stability and security that our white counterparts had.

I read her piece thinking "How could you tell them about the smile? It's our greatest weapon." Yet I know that as the words left her thoughts and stained the paper in ink, there would be many who were guilty of igniting the smile, that would not understand, so I took comfort in that. As a woman of color and queer, your struggles through life, without class, are that much more complex and fraught with mixed messages that class is not only reserved for a certain racial composition, but also for your heterosexual comrades. No one thinks of queer people, let alone queer people of color, as very high on the totem pole. The quintessential crossover queer is Ellen DeGeneres. I believe that crossing over into acceptance came from her visibility in the media and acquiring social status before she outed herself. She had to solidify her place in society before slightly turning her world on its side. She came out at a time where it still wasn't tre-popular to say you were "gay." What does a person who is heterosexual know about trying to find your place in the world, not only through your family, your class, your race, but also your gender identity? It adds yet another layer onto the lasagna, making it take that much longer to bake and possibly altering the flavor we thought it should have.

The idea that who we are is in sharp contrast to the rest of world is something we learn at an early age through our experiences. We are either apart of the "in group" or outside of it looking in. Middle class and upper class society is much tougher to infiltrate than the "mean girls" in middle or high school. In reality, it's a group that affirms they are above you while every thing they live and breathe is made to support that belief. The stories we read played into that societal hierarchy. Through exploring life on their own, each author was able to see life outside the confines of their upbringing and challenge the notion that who they were simply consisted of the clothes, they wore, the food they ate and where they lived. It ran much deeper than the material and often had to do with an ideal of self-worth and self-preservation against all odds, which despite some cultural capital, they were able to receive from their close knit families.

(p.s. - the picture in the corner is one I took of the women's bathroom at RIC. I thought it went perfectly)

Jon Bon Jovi's "Pay What You Can" Restaurant

RED BANK, N.J. (AP) — In three decades as one of the world's biggest rock stars, Jon Bon Jovi has eaten in some of the world's best restaurants, savoring the best food the planet has to offer. [LINK to article HERE]

Yet there's no place he'd rather have dinner than The Soul Kitchen, a "pay-what-you-can" restaurant he and his wife Dorothea established in a former auto body shop near the Red Bank train station in central New Jersey.

The restaurant provides gourmet-quality meals to the hungry while enabling them to volunteer on community projects in return without the stigma of visiting a soup kitchen. Paying customers are encouraged to leave whatever they want in the envelopes on each table, where the menus never list a price.

The restaurant is the latest undertaking by the New Jersey rocker's Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, which has built 260 homes for low-income residents in recent years.
"With the economic downturn, one of the things I noticed was that disposable income was one of the first things that went," Bon Jovi told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday before the restaurant's grand opening ceremony. "Dining out, the family going out to a restaurant, mom not having to cook, dad not having to clean up — a lot of memories were made around restaurant tables.

"When I learned that one in six people in this country goes to bed hungry, I thought this was the next phase of the Foundation's work," he said.

It started several years ago when Dorothea Bongiovi (she uses the legal spelling of her husband's name) and Jon started helping out at a food pantry at nearby St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church. They later moved their focus to the Lunch Break program, which feeds 80 to 120 people a day, dubbing it "The Soul Kitchen."
They brought that name with them to a former auto body shop down the street from the Count Basie Theater, where Jon and his self-titled band have played many fundraising shows for local charities.

It took a year and $250,000, but the restaurant now rivals any of its competitors in trendy Red Bank, with entrees like cornmeal crusted catfish with red beans and rice, grilled chicken breast with homemade basil mayo and rice pilaf, and grilled salmon with soul seasonings, sweet potato mash and sauteed greens, many of which were grown in the herb and vegetable garden right outside the restaurant's doors.
Bon Jovi, who has a home in next-door Middletown, is adamant about one thing.
"This is not a soup kitchen," he emphasizes. "You can come here with the dignity of linens and silver, and you're served a healthy, nutritious meal. This is not burgers and fries.

"There's no prices on our menu, so if you want to come and you want to make a difference, leave a $20 in the envelope on the table. If you can't afford to eat, you can bus tables, you can wait tables, you can work in the kitchen as a dishwasher or sous chef," he said. "If you say to me, 'I'm not a people person,' I say, 'That's not a problem. We'll take you back to Lunch Break to volunteer with those people. If you don't want to volunteer with that, we'll take you to the FoodBank."

After volunteering at one of those places, a person will be given a certificate good for a meal at The Soul Kitchen.

"If you come in and say, 'I'm hungry,' we'll feed you," Bon Jovi said. "But we're going to need you to do something. It's very important to what we're trying to achieve."

That includes making people feel part of a larger community that cares about them, while still expecting them to contribute to society at large.
"This is not an entitlement thing," Bon Jovi said. "This is about empowering people because you have to earn that gift certificate."

He and others at the restaurant want those who can afford to dine out to patronize the restaurant as well and pay what they consider market prices, or even a bit more than that, to help sustain The Soul Kitchen as a true community resource.

Bon Jovi said he is currently writing songs for his band's next album, due out in 2013, along with another typically massive Bon Jovi tour. He said many of the songs are inspired by the current economic downturn and the struggles of everyday people to make ends meet without losing hope.

In the meantime, he and his wife plan to stay active in the restaurant, where he estimates he has worked at least once a week in recent months. The Soul Kitchen is open for dinner Thursday through Saturday, and offers Sunday brunch.

How important is rolling up his sleeves and working in the restaurant to him?
"Last Friday, I was at the White House, serving on the Council for Community Solutions, got on a train, changed in the bathroom and got here in time to wash dishes Friday night," he said. "I'm the dishwasher, for real. I can't cook a lick."
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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
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What I think is really amazing about this article is that someone who has the money to help others has taken the time to understand what those less fortunate are going through. He doesn't have to care or even try to see class from way "up there" but he does. He even works in his OWN restaurant. This quote stuck out at me: "Last Friday, I was at the White House, serving on the Council for Community Solutions, got on a train, changed in the bathroom and got here in time to wash dishes Friday night," he said. "I'm the dishwasher, for real. I can't cook a lick." I thought it was fabulous that he doesn't feel too good to do the dishes in his own restaurant. I wonder if any of his humility has to do with his age and the era in which he grew up. Not many of the younger generations who have money seem to give of it that freely to those in need.

Bon Jovi stated that "a lot of family memories were made around restaurant tables" also alluding to his age and how popular eating out at restaurants with family was and still should be as a means of coming together. There are a lot of people with negative comments to say in regards to this article, but I'd love to see another celebrity who has a restaurant with quality food where you don't get charged a single penny to eat in there --- you just have to contribute in some other way (ie, washing dishes, helping bus tables, volunteer at soup kitchens, etc). It's an incredible act of compassion and although I've always loved Bon Jovi, this has created a newfound respect for him.

Atlanta Woman Arrested For First Name

Again, class & race are clear here. If she was Lindsay Lohan this definitely wouldn't have happened. I honestly don't understand how someone can be arrested and imprisoned off just a "first name" assumption. No research or even real "police work" was done here and a woman had to be locked up for 53 days as a result? Our government never ceases to disgust me. All this money poured into military and police forces and they aren't even trained well enough to arrest someone whose name matches the one in question.

"Atlanta woman wrongly imprisoned for 53 days because of name mix-up"
By Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – 11 hrs ago

An Atlanta woman says she was mistakenly imprisoned for 53 days because police confused her for someone else with the same first name.

Teresa Culpepper says she called police to report that her truck had been stolen in August. But when they showed up at her home, they arrested her for aggravated assault committed by another Teresa.

"All she has is the same first name. The only descriptions that match are 'Teresa' and 'black female,'" Culpepper's attorney, Ashleigh Merchant told The Lookout. Culpepper, who is 47, didn't have the same address, birth date, height, or weight as the Teresa who was supposed to be arrested.

Merchant says Culpepper, who was legitimately convicted of a misdemeanor in the 90s but otherwise has no criminal record, lives in a rough neighborhood where police are frequently on patrol. She and her family were unable to post the $12,000 bond to get her out of jail, so she wasn't released until her public defender found the victim of the assault and brought him to the court to say Culpepper was not the "Teresa" he had accused.

"I just don't think in another side of town this would have ever happened," Merchant says. She says the city must settle with Culpepper or face a lawsuit, and added that the police department is investigating the incident.

"I didn't know what to do," Culpepper told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I didn't know how to get out this situation."

You can watch Culpepper tell her story in the video below.

The World Vs Wall Street

Dear friends,

Thousands of Americans have non-violently occupied Wall St -- an epicentre of global financial power and corruption. They are the latest ray of light in a new movement for social justice that is spreading like wildfire from Madrid to Jerusalem to 146 other cities and counting, but they need our help to succeed.

As working families pay the bill for a financial crisis caused by corrupt elites, the protesters are calling for real democracy, social justice and anti-corruption. But they are under severe pressure from authorities, and some media are dismissing them as fringe groups. If millions of us from across the world stand with them, we'll boost their resolve and show the media and leaders that the protests are part of a massive mainstream movement for change.

This year could be our century's 1968, but to succeed it must be a movement of all citizens, from every walk of life. Click to join the call for real democracy -- a giant live counter of every one of us who signs the petition will be erected in the centre of the occupation in New York, and live webcasted on the petition page:

These national threads are connected by a global narrative of determination to end the collusion of corrupt elites and politicians -- who have in many countries helped cause a damaging financial crisis and now want working families to pay the bill. The mass movement that is responding can not only ensure that the burden of recession doesn't fall on the most vulnerable, it can also help right the balance of power between democracy and corruption. Click to stand with the movement:

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION HERE

In every uprising, from Cairo to New York, the call for an accountable government that serves the people is clear, and our global community has backed that people power across the world wherever it has broken out. The time of politicians in the pocket of the corrupt few is ending, and in its place we are building real democracies, of, by, and for people.

With hope,

Ya

Did YOU know Whole Foods takes food stamps?

Even the author of this article had something to say about people receiving state assistance being able to get groceries at Whole Foods

I confess I did flinch at the idea of these people spending their taxpayer-provided food dollars at Whole Paycheck. And that made me realize that I have this unrecognized prejudice that the poor — meaning those who qualify for food stamps — must be condemned to eat cheap, bad food as the price of receiving state charity.

Even if you search the entire website of Whole Foods it says nothing about being able to use food stamps at their stores. In fact, if you put "food stamps" into the search engine, it will pull up a whole foods blog that asks for donations to "stamp" out hunger. Really? So are they trying to protect a whole class of people by NOT advertising that they actually do something good for the poor? I thought that was something companies liked to advertise, but then again there is an audience to maintain, right?

I found this really disturbing and will probably post more later about it....after I simmer down

Money Talks, Killers Walk...

Last week on Oct. 3rd, Amanda Knox was set free by the Italian court. Knox, or "Foxy Knoxy" as the media had come to call her, had served 4 years in prison convicted of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher. In 2007 the Italian government arrested Knox, her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, & an associate of theirs, Rudy Guede. Though Knox and Sollecito were cleared of all charges against them after a court of appeals found problems with the evidence and investigation, Guede remained in prison - owning the blame of being the sole person responsible for taking Kercher's life.

Why is this a problem? Why is this so frustrating to me?

The day after Knox was freed & home in America, I was at chatting with a co-worker about the trial. My co-worker only knew of the trial from the Lifetime movie on Knox, I on the other hand followed the trial on every major news network I could. A customer overheard our conversation and decided to chip in his 2cents. His opinion?

"The Black kid did it. I believe he drugged Amanda Knox and had her kill that girl. I mean none of us really know, but why would she kill that girl?... It's obvious there's some foul play. And who's the obvious person behind that, you know what I'm saying?"

The Black Kid? The obvious person behind foul play and murder? I stood speechless, I felt myself tense up & it took all I had in me not to give this guy a piece of my mind.

Amanda Knox is a upper middle-class American White female from America. She was studying at the College for Foreigners in Italy. Rudy Guede is a Nigerian immigrant, who has a history of being a petty drug dealer & came from extreme childhood hardships. There's much less sympathy for Guede as he's still sitting in jail, serving 16 years for being an accomplice to murder - and now he's being held 100% responsible for murdering Meredith Kercher, when both Knox and her boyfriend were present at the scene of the crime. Supposedly the 4 of them were playing a sexual game that got "out of control too quickly for anyone to truly explain what happened that night".

There is quite a deal of favoritism towards Knox and Sollecito. There's this shade thrown onto Guede because of what we're not entirely sure. The color of his skin is not the only factor, albeit an important one, but even deeper is the relation of class in regards to personal responsibility for our actions. Could it be that it's more acceptable to jail someone from a lower class because their accessibility to legal help and publicity is highly improbable? Guede doesn't have the same benefits as Amanda Knox. He cannot afford a major law team to represent him in court. He doesn't have hundreds of people in 2 first world countries supporting him and pleading his innocence. His case is is not the same as front-page news Knox, a middle class white female, an American in all senses of the word. To many, even a customer at a retail store, Guede looks like the "obvious" killer.

Not to say that the Italian government is discriminatory, but the facts are the facts. The good looking, pretty, well-off, female American student is home in Seattle and the Black man is still in his cell, paying a debt to society because the cost of freedom was more than he could afford.

I AM NOT MOVING

I Am Not Moving (Short Film) | #OccupyWallStreet

The Hypocrisy of America is visualized in this film. Showing how America has time & time again criticized countless foreign governments for oppression yet in the mirror America does the same to it's own people.
The People will only take so much.

Still the revolution will not be televised. So I ask, who will survive in America?

Black Poverty: Moving Past Negative Stereotypes

The media focuses too much on conflict between commentators such as Tavis Smiley, left, and the president on black poverty and not enough on solutions.
By Joy Moses | September 26, 2011

This weekend President Obama addressed the Congressional Black Caucus to suggest a unified agenda to reduce black unemployment and poverty. This was after a couple of weeks of ongoing media focus on divisions among the Congressional Black Caucus, the president, and outside commentators such as Tavis Smiley and Steve Harvey over the amount of time the president spends talking about economic challenges currently facing African Americans. Maybe it’s the media’s need to highlight conflict, present things in black-and-white terms, and constantly frame everything around the next election. But whatever the reason, the media’s magnification of infighting eclipses a constructive discussion of the problem and solutions—you know, all the other stuff the CBC and commentators were talking about and those carefully laid out policies offered by Obama on Saturday. And it highlights a bigger and long-lasting problem in this country about how we talk about black poverty.

First of all, the media is missing the fact there is consensus among these groups. The president, Congressional Black Caucus, and a broad range of progressives agree that we need to pass the American Jobs Act, which stands to benefit a broad range of Americans. This includes African Americans, who are faced with a 16.7 percent general unemployment rate, and 32.9 percent of African American youth are out of work. With those kinds of numbers we should be pushing legislation that creates jobs for youth, subsidized jobs, new jobs that rebuild infrastructure and schools, incentives to hire veterans (2.6 million of whom are black), and antidiscrimination protections for the unemployed. This is of course a little less sexy than the media’s obsession with who called who an “Uncle Tom.”

But moving beyond the agreement on jobs, larger questions remain that will take far more than sound bites to sort out. Those concerned about black poverty and unemployment (and poverty and unemployment far more generally) are frustrated about the lack of national attention to this issue. Some point the finger at the Obama administration for not talking about it enough, and the administration tends, in turn, to point to its successful efforts to increase black employment, the Recovery Act, and the recently proposed American Jobs Act.

But it’s short sighted to speak of the issue as if it’s something new or that the lack of a robust national dialogue is solely attributable to the fact that we have a black president. We have a long history of demonizing the poor and unemployed and associating both with being the lazy and unworthy “other” (urban black and Latinos). This took on new significance with the rise of certain media outlets and conservative organizations, such as Fox News and the Heritage Foundation, from the 1980s forward. This “other” narrative is a part of our American culture, and as a result, it influences the actions of politicians of all stripes and at all levels of government as well as other public figures, the private sector, nonprofits, and justice movements.

It’s not that people don’t care or that they aren’t doing anything to affect the issue. It’s more that they’re operating within the current cultural context, which is arguably shaped by:

Nasty racial narratives. It’s hard to forget Ronald Reagan’s creation of the welfare queen, a stereotype of a black woman on welfare who is too lazy to work and is taking advantage of the government. Today groups such as Media Matters are still documenting ways that media outlets subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, link antipoverty efforts to unhelpful stereotypes.
Generation gaps. The generation that remembers the 1960s, when a spotlight was placed on the effects of Jim Crow and the civil rights movement was at its peak, likely views poverty and the race-poverty connection differently than later generations. Those of us who work on these issues still have some work to do to successfully create and broadly sell new reasons for new generations to care and be invested in solutions.
A complicated past. African Americans have a complicated history. On one hand, we have achieved tremendous successes since the times of Jim Crow, in part attributable to government programs. On the other hand, we have an enduring history of higher rates of poverty and other bad outcomes—something that discourages us and possibly leads others to believe we are a lost cause.
Undoubtedly, many have thought long and hard about how to address these dynamics. And indeed it may be helpful to continue to pressure President Obama to use his national stage for this purpose. But given the challenges it’s doubtful that approach will be enough. A cultural sea change is necessary, and African Americans should play a critical role in this effort.

First, we should more aggressively reclaim our image. The stereotypes about poor people and poor black people need to go.

Second, we should move the nation toward Generation Next—finding new ideas that cause a broad range of people to care about black poverty and poverty in general.

Finally, we must untangle the complicated history of our struggle for economic justice and tell a new and simplified narrative—one that celebrates our progress while also acknowledging the need to do more.

In these ways we can contribute to a future in which we not only have a constructive national dialogue about poverty, but we are finding and implementing appropriate solutions.

Joy Moses is a Senior Policy Analyst at American Progress.

--- This article focused on some of the main reasons that black poverty & racial tensions still exist. The main reasons include negative stereotypical beliefs about African Americans as well as the joblessness that so many of the youth face, even though people would like to say that minorities are lazy & just want to live off of welfare. If there are no opportunities afforded to you, then how can you be expected to even try to change your circumstances for the better? There are just as many if not more (in some cases) non-minorities on welfare or getting some type of government assistance. Redeeming the quality and importance of black life outside of slavery, poverty, drug dealers, alleged athletic superior complexes and rappers there are many educated and talented people of color who go unmentioned in the daily news. The media has always had a way of portraying & reaffirming political & socioeconomic fallacies for the public middle and upper to lay blame on. I think it's great that Obama (who many believe does nothing as our first president of color) brought up that something needs to be done.

Young people are delaying taking the steps that traditionally represent movement into adult life

Only 55 percent of young Americans have jobs, lowest since WWII
By Zachary Roth | The Lookout – 12 hrs ago

Unemployment among young adults is at its highest point since World War II, new data show. And it's having a disconcerting impact on the trajectory of their careers and lives.

"We have a monster jobs problem, and young people are the biggest losers," Andrew Sum, an economist with the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University told the Associated Press.

Just 55.3 percent of people between 16 and 29 were employed in 2010 on average, the according to new figures released by the Census Bureau. That represents an enormous drop from 67.3 percent in 2000. Among teens the figure was less than 30 percent.

The result? Young people are delaying taking the steps that traditionally represent movement into adult life: moving to a new place, getting married, and buying a new home. Just 4.4 percent of 18- to 34-year olds moved across state lines -- again, the lowest level since World War Two (though such moves have been declining since long before the recent downturn, it's worth noting).

Roughly 5.9 million Americans between 25 and 34 lived with their parents. That's up by 25 percent since before the recession began in late 2007. (Men are nearly twice as likely as women to move back in with Mom and Dad.) The marriage rate for those between 25 and 34 fell to 44.2 percent, also a new low. And home ownership declined for the fourth straight year.

"Many young adults are essentially postponing adulthood and all of the family responsibilities and extra costs that go along with it," Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau told the AP. If that continues, it would make the U.S. more like Europe, where youth unemployment is far higher and many people continue to live with their parents into their 30s.

In addition, studies have shown that when people experience unemployment at a young age, it depresses their likely earning power over the course of their entire career.

"These people will be scarred, and they will be called the 'lost generation' - in that their careers would not be the same way if we had avoided this economic disaster," Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard, said.

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I thought it was interesting that the age range spans from 16-29 years old which is mid-high school career into young adults in the workforce on a more permanent basis. This is the type of dilemma that we discussed in class regarding the law that Vermont is putting into place which reduces long term career opportunities for young adults between the very ages listed in this article. Clearly, this problem is affecting everyone and something needs to be done to create more economic opportunities.

Katrina: How Black & White the details of poverty really are...

"Even now, these powerful tools of white racism are used to justify racial inequality and perpetuate the still fundamental racist relations of the United States. Under the watchful eyes of white elites, New Orleans and the United States generally, have developed structurally over fifteen generations now to maintain these alienated and alienating racist-relations in major societal institutions. In this manner, white elites, as well as rank-and-file whites, have kept a large proportion of our African American citizens in unjust poverty—with chronically underfunded schools, diminished job opportunities, and limited housing choices. This unjust impoverishment takes place within a continuing framework of well-institutionalized racism, which provides most whites with the current benefits and privileges coming from many generations of unjust enrichment."

That quote encompasses just about everything I've been saying for over a decade. Katrina isn't the first time in history that the importance of the lives of people of color have been diminished. Slavery was an economical period of injust that allowed Whites to capitalize from the labor of blacks while abusing, degrading and reducing them to servants only good enough to wash their clothes, work on their farms and raise their children. This has greatly affected the women of color as result. As many commentators dispute the racial claims, it's hard to think of anything but blatant racism when clear & consistent measures weren't taken to have residents, mainly of color and in a lower class, evacuated prior to the hurricane. Hurricane Irene recently hit New England in a way it's never experienced before and all measures and precautions were taken to be certain that lives & properties were preserved. Is New Orleans, a historically racially divided city, any different than the affluent and highly Causcasian populated Northeast? Well of course it is. Even though the very backbone of New Orleans was created at the expense of a culture's identity, those people still weren't good enough to try to save along with their livelihood.

Not only did New Orleans divide the black community against each other (light skinned free slaves against darker skinned black people -- which is still a cultural dispute to this day) but they made it economically, politically and socially difficult to advance as a resident of color in that region. What I don't understand is how a whole group of people are good enough to ensure the financial stability of another people, yet once freed, are denied their basic civil rights by the same race that they helped lift up. In many ways, the aftermath of slavery as well as Katrina are still vivid indicators that society views African Americans as second class citizens, still not worthy to do more than clean, cook and be subservient to the financially dominant race. Although Whites are at the financial threshold of our society, they are actually becoming the minority, with the United States as well as other countries giving new meaning to the term "melting pot." Class analysis is important because not only can we see the disparities between gender, race & economic status but we can further identify how they intertwine, intersect and run together like lines written in ink on a wet paper.

It isn't circumstantial; it's intentional. The ability to discriminate based on economic means forces people of color, especially African Americans, to remain at the bottom of the food chain despite the growing numbers of men and women of color with degrees from higher education. The lack of people in color in politics, the government and most law-making positions assures that their voices won't be heard. After all, if you're too busy being worried about where you will live after a hurricane, you can't possibly be focused on a future in politics or economics to better your life and the lives of those around you affected by a society that is determined to keep you from rising above the poverty level. Racism also plays on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Racism ensures that the basic needs are barely met so that people of color cannot ever hope to achieve more than the basics, if that, let alone, dreams of being in power and advancing in class, despite race. In some ways, I believe that there are people who make light of Katrina and other issues within communities of color for fear that they would one day rise above and be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin like Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of.

Katrina is just one way that racism has been institutionalized by class and race. Race is always second to class in the United States, especially in the North, when it comes to matter of treatment, but it usually is the underlying factor that influences the responses and actual reactions to things that occur. The fact that Laura Bush & other whites were able to make callous jokes about the disparity & possibly "better conditions" in hotels that Blacks faced AFTER Katrina clearly shows the lack of integrity and common respect for people of color. If someone made a joke about a hurricane or tornado in the Mid-West that affected middle class or possibly even lower class whites, it would have been a different story.

The United States constantly seeks to ignore, destroy and eliminate diversity & culture at its most basic roots, by stealing it all and claiming it as their own. So many peoples of color have suffered throughout history at the hands of capitalism, racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice. As long as the percentage of the dominant race continues to be the dominant holders of the greatest financial means as well as the best employment, education, residence, and means of advancement, then the voices of the rest of the invisible race-less, class-less will not be recognized. In fact, they don't exist, so then again, neither do I.

Class Matters -- Knowledge is like nectar for the brain

So considering I have two others blogs that I try to make time for in between my three jobs, school & handling the chaos that is my world, it only seemed like more fun to kind of add this class blog to my LEAST used one on blogspot.

I'm Ayanna...I don't think anyone but bank tellers & the people at motor vehicles really need to call me/identify me by that name. I'm cool with that. I've been given a variety of nicknames, but most people call me Ya, Aya or Yanna.

By day, I'm a retail slave & by night I'm a student with a voracious appetite for learning. That's right, I said voracious. Don't you just love the way that word sounds? Anyways, I left a really amazing full time job at an Ivy League University to continue my education on a more full time basis therefore I now am subjected to horrible hours, nights and weekends when I'm not in class, and straight-up rude people in the wonderful magical land of retail. Oh, one thing I can say is that it never is boring, but it doesn't appeal to my creative - thought provoking side.

So far this semester has been crazy. I mean really, who has a hurricane happen right before the first day of school? Pretty surreal, especially since we don't live in a region that even gets hurricanes. *sigh* It seems as if my professors, minus this clas, expect me to purchase like 30 books, read them and take tests in the next two weeks. Right, so in the real world, not the one that marvel heroes from comic books are in, this is insanely unjust when you have three jobs & barely enough time to make a sandwich or do that thing I can't remember the last time I did called "sleep"...

All in all, I get up every day, manage to smile and roll with the punches. I'm a psychology major and [new] women studies minor. Super excited about the promise that my minor holds for expanding my mind and opportunities within my own communities as well as those around me. I love learning. Knowledge is like nectar for the brain, you know?

When I'm not in class or smiling like one of the Stepford Wives at one of my multiple jobs, I am literally outside -- like at one with nature. I love visiting state parks, beaches, forests, rivers, lakes...anywhere near water where the air is so clean you cough because your lungs are readjusting. During this peaceful time away from people and the rest of the homosapien world, I indulge in three of my favorites: music, poetry & photography. You name it, I listen to it. I love music from Chopin to NIN to Lupe Fiasco to Adele. Music is a window to the soul. My poetry is what keeps me sane. I've written over 400 pieces and have been trying to get published a little longer than forever --- life has had other plans for me. I do however have a poetry/my thoughts blog attached to this one. My photography [I also have a photography blog here too] is also something I hold near & dear to me. I guess I would say my creative side suffers to the real side of my life, but you do what you have to do when you're an adult.

I try to keep life outside of work pretty stress-free. I collect swords, love my acoustic guitar and have a movie collection of indie flicks that's insane. I'm quirky, talkative, laugh a lot and love to play with words. I'm always open to meeting new people, traveling and whatever adventure is around the corner. I'm an Aries so I love a challenge, never give up and am always there for those I love. I work hard and play hard. I have a keen sense of perception and seem to know things about other people they don't know about themselves. I'm a crazy mixture, but I'll never bore you.

I am me.