Community Innovation News - Christine Sculati's blog » social justice

NPR reports on the massive mobilization for Census 2010

christine — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:16:17 +0000

On Monday I wrote a post about how nonprofit organizations, community leaders and foundations are collaborating to reach hard-to-count populations and ensure that their constituents participate in Census 2010. Several important campaigns are taking place in the Bay Area with the financial support of The San Fransisco Foundation, The California Endowment, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Foundation, James Irvine Foundation and other local foundations. In addition to grant funds, The San Francisco Foundation and The California Endowment are helping grantees to collaborate, strategize and track their efforts.

Yesterday, National Public Radio reported on how major national foundations have also launched intensive campaigns to reach the hard-to-count including the homeless and those who might be uncomfortable participating based on immigration status. National funders of Census 2010 initiatives include The Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

As the NPR story reports, Voto Latino came up with innovative ways that link the popularity of the iPhone with young Latinos and incentives for filling out the census form. They developed an iPhone application for Los Angeles County that gives users the opportunity to win music and possibly a free concert if they learn about the census.

Listen to the NPR story:

Why is the Census important to you?

christine — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:23:59 +0000

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Any day you should receive notice in the mail about the 2010 Census. The official questionnaire will follow the initial announcement one week later in mid-March.

The federal government distributes more than $400 billion a year to state, tribal and local governments based on the decennial Census count. And every ten years some states gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and some lose, depending on what the Census numbers say about the relative sizes of their populations. The changing numbers require states to redraw Congressional District boundaries.

Yet to the despair of social justice advocates, populations that are most in need of community services, resources and civil rights enforcement have also been the hardest to count. In the Bay Area a number of foundations have helped to mobilize outreach in historically undercounted populations by awarding grants to grassroots organizations with extensive reach in their communities.

When it comes to filling out box #9 with regards to race, advocacy organizations will also play a critical educational role to show how individuals can “self-select” by choosing more than one race or “some other race” to identify as multi-racial or by national origin. For example, some might choose to enter Afghan, Sikh, Maya or Haitian. This widely-syndicated article by the Associated Press describes how some Caribbean-American leaders are urging their communities to write their nationalities on the line under “some other race” on the forms, along with checking the racial categories they feel identify them best.

While the way race is counted is an important evolution in the Census, it remains to be seen how the Census Bureau will tabulate the write-in selections in 2011.

Articles and Resources on Census 2010

Nonprofits Count!: A project of the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network, this website provides information, including best practices, on how nonprofit organizations and human services agencies can help produce an accurate count of hard-to-count populations.

Mapping Hard-to-Count Communities: Hard-to-Count (HTC) populations are groups that may have a higher non-response rate on the 2010 Census. With support from The California Endowment, Healthy Cities has generated a portal through which Census stakeholders may locate communities at risk for undercounting in California.

Justice Department Confirms Confidentiality of Census Information – March 5, 2010 article by the Washington Post

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Census History: Counting Hispanics – March 3, 2010 article by the Pew Hispanic Center

Census: Battleground for Money and Justice – February 17, 2010 by Blue Avocado

Most View Census Positively, But Some Have Doubts - February 12, 2010 by The Pew Research Center for the People & The Press

California Complete Count Committee

The Census Project Blog: A collaboration of state and local governments, civil rights and labor groups, housing and child advocates, businesses, professional societies, and research organizations interested in a fair and accurate Census 2010

Brookings Institution Census Information

Grantmaker Initiatives

Census 2010 Grants Will Bring Visibility to Hard-to-Count Populations – The San Francisco Foundation
New York Foundations Push to Get Accurate Census Count – Philanthropy News Digest

Private foundations offer millions to ensure accurate census count – Contra Costa Times

The California Endowment has awarded nearly 11,000 grants across California totaling more than $1.9 billion.

New White House Council on Women and Girls

christine — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Earlier today, President Obama signed an Executive Order to create the White House Council on Women and Girls.

The mission of the council will be to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families.

According to the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity, the actions of over 40 national organizations–including the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity and the NAPE Education Foundation influenced the decision. They called for the reestablishment of critical women’s programs in the executive branch. In December, these organizations sent a letter to the Obama transition team, requesting that the new administration restore and strengthen all offices that in past administrations have played a fundamental role in protecting and advancing women’s issues and opportunities.

White House Council on Women and Girls
White House announcement

Opportunities their mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers never dreamed of” – The White House blog

Obama’s Council on Women and Girls – Article in the New York Times

New Bay Area books about community, culture, and social change

christine — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:37:09 +0000

In recent months, nonprofit presses in Berkeley have released new books that highlight diverse Bay Area neighborhoods and unexpected ways communities come together.

In September, Heyday Books, publishers of books about California history, arts, and culture, released “Under the Dragon – California’s New Culture.” The book is also the subject of a new Oakland Museum exhibit called “Trading Traditions” beginning in January 2008. Written by locals Lonny Shavelson and Fred Setterberg, Under the Dragon follows the lives of a diversity of Bay Area communities while capturing the poignancy of individual struggle in a way that goes beyond the personal. The stories are raw and authentic, and the photographs are stunning.

Another nonprofit Berkeley-based publisher, New Village Press, is celebrating revered community activists at a launch party on December 9, 2007 for “Building Commons and Community” by the late Karl Linn and “Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing” by Louise Dunlap. The event will be held from 3:00 to 6:00 pm at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists (BFUU) Hall at Cedar and Bonita Streets, and is co-sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Committee and the NorCal Chapter of Architects/ Designers/ Planners for Social Responsibility. Speakers will include Louise Dunlap and Karl Linn’s longtime friend and colleague, Carl Anthony.

For over 40 years, Linn devoted himself to bringing people together in the spirit of reclaiming what he called “neighborhood commons,” creating urban oases, combined park-playground projects from vacant and blighted plots of land.

Linn, who grew up on a farm in Germany before his family was forced to flee Nazi persecution, worked as a child therapist and later established a distinguished landscape architecture practice in New York. By the late 1950s, he had decided to devote his career to social justice, teaching, and creating these neighborhood commons.

In the late 1980s, when Linn retired to Berkeley, he helped found the Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility and the Urban Habitat Program at Earth Island Institute. In 1993, Linn’s wife Nicole Milner, environmental justice activist Carl Anthony, and others banded together to convince Berkeley officials to name a city-owned community garden after Linn.

Soon thereafter, Linn teamed up with a UC Berkeley professor, her students, local craftspeople, and neighbors to rejuvenate the dilapidated garden, located in Berkeley’s Westbrae neighborhood. The Karl Linn Community Garden’s transformation inspired the creation of the nearby Peralta and Northside community gardens, the demonstration home known as the Berkeley EcoHouse, and a natural and human history project along the adjacent Ohlone greenway.

A Web site on Linn’s life and work can be found at www.karllinn.org.

‘Green for All’

christine — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:55:19 +0000

In October, the New York Times published an op-ed article called “The Green-Collar Solution” by journalist Thomas L. Friedman. The piece is about Van Jones’ crusade to bring economic opportunities to disadvantaged communities through job training in emerging and expanding environmental businesses.

Jones, a social justice leader in the Bay Area, has also become a prominent national advocate and voice for underserved and low-income communities that have not had opportunities to participate in the growing green economy. He serves on several advisory boards for environmental groups as well as the new Tipping Point Community, an anti-poverty philanthropic organization founded in 2005 in San Francisco.

With other environmental leaders, Jones recently created a national partnership called “Green For All” to bring “green collar” jobs to urban areas across the country.

East meets West in Fremont, California

christine — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:00:03 +0000

On June 23, 2007, the Foundation for Self Reliance presented a symposium called “East Meets West: Awakening to the Challenges of Afghans in Fremont” that turned into a monumental event. Over two hundred guests gathered at The Golden Peacock restaurant in Fremont to hear panels in both Farsi and English including a keynote by Dr. Mo Qayoumi, a speech by Rona Popal of the Afghan Coalition and Afghan Women’s Association International, and presentations by Dr. Ronald Takaki on “Multiculturalism in America,” Dr. Hatem Bazian on “Islam in America,” Professor Ghafar Safa on “Violence and Reform in Afghanistan,” Tamim Ansari on “Biculturality: Understanding The Other’” and Fremont Councilmember Anu Natarajan on “Diversity and Public Policy.” Fremont is home to the largest community of Afghan immigrants in the U.S.

The Foundation for Self-Reliance and their community partners, the Afghan Coalition, are already planning a sequel event at the Golden Peacock on Saturday, January 19, 2008.

Press Coverage:

Fremont Conference Tackles Challenges Facing Afghan Immigrants – KCBS

Afghan cultural issues subject of panel, book – San Francisco Chronicle

Van Jones testifies in Congress for ‘green collar’ jobs

christine — Thu, 24 May 2007 18:45:25 +0000

On May 22, 2007 Van Jones, President and Founder of the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center, testified in Washington D.C. at a special hearing called, “Economic Impacts of Global Warming: Green Collar Jobs.” He was there to push Congress to make “clean energy jobs” and “green-collar job training” for urban youth and low income communities a top priority.

He reported back on his trip to Washington in the Ella Baker Center blog, Grist Magazine, and the Huffington Post.

Jones defines a “green collar” job as a “vocational job in an ecologically responsible trade.” With the increasing demand for alternative energy sources such as solar panels, waste reduction, materials re-use and recycling, and sustainable agriculture, skills in these trades will give unprecedented opportunities to low income communities – if training programs are designed and delivered effectively.

At the hearing, Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis (CA-32), a Member of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, delivered a statement called, “Green Jobs Will Create Pathways Out of Poverty.” Congresswoman Solis is currently building support for federal funding of “green collar job training” programs, which would help give low income communities access to the skills they will need to compete in the new green economy.

According to Jones, The Ella Baker Center initially introduced the concept of green collar job training as a pathway out of poverty to Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this year, which led to the beginnings of legislative language by Congresswoman Solis. The Center is expecting the proposal to be a part of the historic U.S. energy package, to be introduced on July Fourth (“Energy Independence Day“).

Digital storytelling and grassroots journalism

christine — Thu, 10 May 2007 01:45:43 +0000

Digital storytelling gives communities and grassroots groups opportunities to share experiences and raise awareness to social change issues and ideas like never before. Open source, free, and accessible technologies have created unprecedented opportunities for communities to build networks and amplify voices of the under-heard.

The Bay Area Video Coalition and The Community Technology Foundation of California collaborated to create the Digital Storytelling Institute, which works with community-based organizations to develop social change digital storytelling programs. The Institute’s Web site provides several free resources on how to plan and produce a digital story. The downloadable PDFs include preproduction and production tips (steps to take, defining your audience, camera movements, interview tips), storyboard templates, other online storytelling and grant funding resources, and distribution opportunities.

Social Justice in the New Green Economy

christine — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 03:34:25 +0000

Recently, I spoke with Ian Kim, policy director for the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center about his organization’s aspirations of building opportunities for disadvantaged communities in the “new green economy.” With an affinity for creating memorable names like “Silence the Violence” and “Books not Bars,” I was immediately struck by the campaign called “Reclaim the Future” and its “Apollo Challenge.”

Simply put, they are urging supporters to sign on, challenging Oakland to create sustainable jobs and energy independence within 10 years, the same amount of time President Kennedy gave the nation for “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” In 1969, Apollo 11 met the lunar challenge after 192 hours. In the Winter 2007 issue of Yes! Magazine, the Center’s executive director Van Jones and communications director Ben Wyskida wrote about their ideas for creating high quality jobs for Oakland residents while cleaning up the environment, improving public health and helping the region achieve energy independence through the promotion of alternative energy technologies.