Supreme Court Nominee Is Labeled As Racist
This week in politics President Obama publicly announced his nomination for the U.S Supreme Court. The nominee Sonia Sotomayor will become the first Latino judge in the highest court and another female justice to join the traditionally male majority seating.
The announcement was not even 3 minutes underway before critics from the right argued that she was not fit for the job and labeled her a “racist” who purposely threw out lawsuits filed by white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut. Her legal background and achievements are under a microscope by Republican representatives and talk show hosts who believe she abused her power in favor of race.
The Soft Cage In A Digital Age- Who Watches The Watcher?
This is a topic that I have found interesting for many years and studied in various categories from racial profiling, criminal surveillance, to consumer marketing. The article “Who Watches the Watcher?” by Eric Stoddart takes a theological approach on the subject that I have never read before. I thought this was a excellent article since he wrote about the “suspicion and lack of trust” that humans have for each other that is normal when dealing with safety and preconditioned information about a culture or ethnic group. In the book The Soft Cage by Christian Parenti he explains how surveillance in America started from slavery to Chinese railroad workers to cowboys creating the first credit report system and now a major weapon in the war on terror. In Stoddart’s article he gives a few examples of how the Bible tells stories and fables to show the divine and higher power that God has over the world and people. Christians believe that any untruthful speech will be punished or judge by the Creator and not forgotten. Surveillance from a spiritual force is needed to become a believer in the Gospels of the Bible and fundamental beliefs in Christianity. Read the rest of this entry »
Digital Democracy Reflections
Early this year I started to see a trend in the 2008 Presidential election and noticed that more and more people were tuning into politics like never before. Younger people began to mobilize in voter registration efforts and really identifying what issues they wanted addressed from any of the candidates. This was truly a moment in American history that defined what America prides itself after: democracy. The meaning of democracy according to wikipedia is a “form of government in which power is held by people in a free electoral voting system”.
When I first applied for the Digital Media program at the University of Washington I noticed that Digital Democracy was a class offered due to the election timing and surge of digital media applications. It didn’t take long for my political science background to start looking for ways to join the class and learn more. So I dived in and still very grateful that I did so.
Digital Democracy is a fitting title for this course because it provides a greater understanding of what has been improved and reaffirmed from previous elections whether on the local, state or Federal level. This course presented a open discussion of what was happening during this election and Kathy Gill was the moderator and informer. A skilled writer and advocate of digital media and its usage she informed her students on what has changed since the last election and what to possibly expect in upcoming ones as well. We discussed topics such as digital electioneering, digital advocacy and e-government practices that provided solid blueprints of how many campaigns have utilized the Internet to mobilize voters and supporters. Our reading came from two well written books that were also fitting for the current events taking place. Joe Trippi’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” provided many inside stories of what a campaign manager was able to do with little resources but a huge following and guerilla tactics. In “New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen” Philip Howard wrote about how local political elections and lobbying are carried out with the development of sophisticated organizations that are maintained with the usage of the Internet. Howard wrote how the nature of political consultancy is more than just polling and media relations, if requires strategical thinking on all levels. The voters have to be informed and each candidate wants to be able to control their message so that their target voters are not mislead about key issues. With each political campaign their is a strategy to raise money in order for the organization to survive and compete with their opponents. We witnessed with the 2008 election the Obama campaign raising over $600 million dollars in fund-raising with a large portion of it from online donations.
My short reflection of this class will be expanded with further examples in a actual essay that I will be posting very soon.
sources: Howard, Philip. New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. 2006.
Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Updated edition 2008
