Tuesday, August 27, 2024
New to URL Media? Subscribe below to get our weekly newsletters.
A View From the Ground
News and information about politics, government, civic participation and engagement from URL Media's network of Black and Brown publishers.
URL Media co-founder S. Mitra Kalita attended the Democratic National Convention for the first time, and offers her takeaways on how to center voters of color this election.
5 post-DNC truths about Black and Brown voters: Asian Americans hosted a range of events on the sidelines of the Democratic convention last week in Chicago, but as URL Media co-founder S. Mitra Kalita notes, few had speaking roles on the main stage.“We needed to hear from more Next Gen talent,” writes Kalita for URL Media. Asian representation, Kalita says, felt muted given that Kamala Harris is half Indian and would be the first Asian American president ever.
This was one of her many observations of her first time attending the DNC, where Kalita also took note of the steps Dems took in controlling their message. National headlines declared how “Influencers took over the DNC,” but Kalita says they were also hoodwinked. One creator told her they were summoned to interview a candidate only to be told there would be no questions, and offered an opportunity to take a photo with the politician instead. This kind of treatment, Kalita notes, reveals how networks like URL Media and influencers both struggle with gaining access.
“It seems time to rally together on behalf of our communities and fight for access and a better informed electorate together versus acting like it’s a zero-sum game or that there’s one correct way of imparting the news,” Kalita writes.
In that spirit, Kalita — in collaboration with the Hindustan Times and URL Media — interviewed South Asian delegates at the DNC on Harris’ historic run for presidency with Pennsylvania State Rep. Arvind Venkat weighing in on what the nomination means for him and his South Indian family.
Justice has been delayed for Black farmers, and they’re looking to the next president for answers: The Biden administration has begun paying Black and other minority farmers following decades of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But advocates say these direct payments, which total $2 billion to more than 40,000 farmers, aren’t enough and they’re hoping a Kamala Harris presidency could potentially help their plight.
“We are just getting an award assistance, not a settlement,” Bernice Atchinson, an 85-year-old advocate from Alabama, told Capital B. “We are looking for something better.”
Atchinson represented Black farmers in the landmark case Pigford v. Glickman, a class-action lawsuit alleging the USDA discriminated against Black farmers from 1983 to 1997 when they applied for federal financial assistance, and failed to respond to complaints of discrimination, according to Capital B.
Advocates like Atchinson want to see full debt relief and changes within the USDA, including the removal of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who has a decades-long fraught relationship with Black farmers. A Trump presidency, advocates say, will make things worse. While Trump handed out historic levels of pandemic-related funding, less than 1% went toward Black farmers, reports Capital B.
Kamala Harris’ presidential run inspires Minnesota’s South Asian community: As the Harris-Walz ticket energizes South Asian voters across the country, Sahan Journal explores their potential impact in the upcoming presidential election. With about 2.98 million South Asians eligible to vote in the U.S., Chintan Patel — executive director of Indian American Impact — says that’s a big enough voting bloc to swing battleground states. But like other racial and ethnic groups, South Asians aren’t monolithic.
Minnesota is home to an Indian population of about 50,000, and enthusiasm for Harris was clear earlier this month as residents celebrated India’s independence during IndiaFest at the state Capitol. Sahan Journal’s Joey Peters noted patrons stopping by a Democratic farmer labor booth to distribute campaign material for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Folks like Vishala Pamulaparthy and Madhu Annamraju, with the Minnesota Asian Indian Democratic Association, say their views on abortion rights and immigration align with Harris and Walz. But there are others like Asma Zubair, a Pakistani American who is disillusioned with Democrats’ handling of the war in Gaza and who doesn’t plan to vote this fall. Then there’s Sourav Bhunia, a medical engineer who agrees with some Republican ideas, but feels the party has “always seemed a bit unwelcoming to immigrants.”
“That strain has always been there,” says Bhunia, who will campaign this year for Vice President Kamala Harris.
‘Not in our name.’ California journalists oppose state deal with big tech to fund newsrooms, AI: A “first-in-the-nation partnership” between the state of California and tech companies will steer millions of dollars to local newsrooms and toward the launch of an AI accelerator project. Lawmakers and publishers are celebrating the deal, especially as the industry has been struck with a series of layoffs. Journalists, however, aren’t buying it.
“The publishers who claim to represent our industry are celebrating an opaque deal involving taxpayer funds, a vague AI accelerator project that could very well destroy journalism jobs, and minimal financial commitments from Google to return the wealth this monopoly has stolen from our newsrooms,” read a statement released by the Media Guild of the West, which represents media workers in Southern California.
As news agencies have reported, this agreement effectively kills the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that directed big tech companies like Google to pay publishers a fee each time they used local news content and sold advertising alongside it. Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West, put it this way: “This isn’t regulation. It’s a ratification of Google’s monopoly power over our newsrooms.”
However, small outlets, including a number of ethnic media publications, are supporting the agreement. As Chris Krewson, executive director of Local Independent Online News Publishers, told CalMatters: “I just don’t know that this industry should be in the position of saying no to any help it can get … And I don’t think it makes us more or less reliant (on tech platforms) than we already have been.”
ICE severely undercounts number of people in custody (Documented)
Check out our Currency of Impact dashboard, a new tool designed to revolutionize media buying conversations and put community impact on the foreground. Dive into our impact tracker and case studies highlighting demonstrated impact across the URL Media network. This project was co-produced with the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Visit it here.
