SPOILER ALERT: The endings to 3 films are revealed in this blog.
I just finished watching Lust, Caution and I have to say—I am utterly sick of stories of underground resistance crumbling as a result of a woman’s actions. It’s really a tired formula: A female protagonist is involved in a subversive political movement, is depended on for a key element of some act being carried out, and at the last minute reveals the plan because her emotions get the better of her. I am tired of women being portrayed as the ultimate betrayers. And I am also angry that these consistent portrayals seem to reinforce the idea that women cannot help but develop emotional attachments and are therefore unreliable and unfit for work that demands clear-headedness.
Reviewing Entertainment Weekly interviews with the candidates, Marc Ambinder expresses surprise that
In some ways, Obama has the tastes of a 72 year old man; McCain has the tastes of a 47 year old whippersnapper. Who knew?
At risk of sounding cynical, why should we be surprised when Obama associates himself with Dick Van Dyke and McCain associates himself with Usher? Isn't this what candidates often do in interviews - try to address potential vulnerabilities and convince more people that they're more like them than they realized (that is, when they're not focused on doubling-down on their perceived strengths)? That the guy smeared as a secretly foreign terrorist fist jabber touts an old white guy and the really old white guy who can't use a computer touts an R & B artist seems to make a lot of sense. Same reason around election time we often hear more from Democrats about their love of guns and Jesus and from Republicans about their love of Black people and the environment.
A C-SPAN clip from this week’s Young America’s Foundation conference came to my attention. YAF VP Patrick Coyle gave a speech claiming, astonishingly, that progressives are intent on stifling the speech of conservatives, and he specifically mentioned Campus Progress. If progressives, Coyle asked, are “so truly confident of their domination of the college campus, they would not try to stop speakers. They would say that we should go ahead and bring in their one conservative speaker… but they are so threatened.” Coyle continued by noting that Campus Progress is seeking “to train a new generation of so-called progressive leaders. Each year they hold a conference much like this one, and they have also started a campus lecture program to bring in even more liberal speakers to college campuses.” Coyle said that conservative students should go to progressive events and speak out.
Patrick, get real. Who is confident, and who is threatened?
Campus Progress invites conservative speakers to speak at our events -- like TownHall’s Amanda Carpenter, who appeared at our annual conference this summer, and Trent Lott, who spoke at one of our campus events this year with Tom Daschle. We invite conservatives to be interviewed on our website, like David Horowitz. Our interns cornered Ben Stein and convinced him to make a promo video for us. All these conservatives were gracious and interested in genuine debate on important issues. We admit young conservatives to our national conference as attendees, and we admit reporters from conservative publications like National Review to cover our conference. We have repeatedly denounced actions by people on the progressive side to shout down conservative campus speakers, throw pies in their faces, or otherwise interfere with honest, open debate.
Meanwhile, what has YAF done? The very YAF conference at which Patrick Coyle was speaking has repeatedly shut out Campus Progress-affiliated young people as attendees and journalists. This year they refused to admit our intern Chenwei Zhang, even after Amanda Carpenter herself called YAF, cited her positive experience at the Campus Progress conference, and urged YAF to be open minded. In 2006, when pressed after excluding a CampusProgress.org reporter, Julie Siegel, YAF said it would not admit a reporter from The Nation, whose contributors since 1865 have included Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, John Steinbeck, and Franklin Roosevelt. YAF also ejected a reporter from the venerable Washington Monthly for the crime of also posting on the CampusProgress.org blog.
Patrick, do you actually believe what you are saying? Have you checked in with your colleagues Mr. Custer, Mr. Mattera , and Mr. Robinson, who have repeatedly barred Campus Progress from the doors of your events?
Who is confident, and who is threatened? Mr. Coyle also repeated the same tired argument conservatives have trotted out since we launched, that Campus Progress is unnecessary, because colleges themselves are the progressive organizing institutions: “What I think the leaders of Campus Progress are forgetting is that if you think about it, there is no reason for them to exist…. Typically, the counterpart to Young America's Foundation is usually the college itself.”
We’ve addressed that argument before. If there was no need for Campus Progress to exist, why do thousands of young people attend our events, participate in our campaigns, contribute to or visit our websites, apply for our action grants and publication grants? We’re not necessary? Yes, Patrick, it is the market working – supply and demand.
Campus Progress and our partner organizations are growing and gaining influence because young people are smart, engaged, and progressive. Working together – progressive groups and young people – we are getting things done: like making college more affordable, preventing efforts by conservatives to regulate the free speech of students and professors, moving campuses and communities toward clean energy, keeping the pressure on to halt genocide in Sudan, working for a stable outcome in Iraq, seeking to end government interference with freedom to marry.
YAF’s budget is seven times that of Campus Progress, but heaven knows how you are spending all that money. My guess is big fees to your speakers and consultants. If I were a donor or board member of YAF, I would start to wonder what the staff was actually getting done to make a difference.
Who is confident and who is threatened? We invite conservative voices, your ideas, and your participation. We want debate and dialogue. You lock the doors and keep us out, all the while muttering about George Soros and announcing, against all evidence, that Campus Progress has no reason to exist. You aren’t fooling anyone. And your movement is in shambles.
As we sit at our little cubicles, completely immersed in our sheltered progressive wonderland, something else magnificent and alien to us is taking place in the halls of the George Washington University. Yep, that’s right; the Young America’s Foundation is putting on their 30th Annual National Conservative Student Conference. I strongly believe that the best way to grow intellectually is to expose yourself to a wide variety of ideas, including those that you may not believe yourself. The National Conservative Student Conference would have been a fantastic opportunity for me to do this. So a couple weeks ago, I decided to register for the conference... Read More »
Award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh was kind enough to speak at Campus Progress and The Nation's National Youth Journalism Conference last month in front of a packed crowd of 200 young journalists from across the country. Impressive as always, Mr. Hersh artfully explained some of the keys to becoming a great reporter as well as some amazing national security anecdotes. Some of his comments have been getting press over at ThinkProgress.
Campus Progress Action, the sister organization of Campus Progress, has been working hard on our I'm Voting For campaign. Many of you have already heard of it or even submitted your own video online or filmed a testimonial at our national conference. For those who haven't, check out our website here to learn more about I’m Voting For.
We launched our first "Best Of" press releases this week, emailing the best I’m Voting For videos in each issue category to a huge list of reporters, bloggers, and journalists. We'll update you with any press hits, but we thought you guys might like to see the videos that were selected as the best ones!
Campus Progress congratulates Congress on the passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act. This legislation takes another small step toward an affordable and accessible system of higher education, and will finally reauthorize the Higher Education Act of 1965.
News leaked recently that the Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is drafting a rule that substantially threatens women and families’ access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare. The nationwide outcry against the draft regulation has been enormous; thousands of people have e-mailed the White House or their members of Congress, written letters to the editor of their local newspaper, or encouraged everyone they know to sign online petitions to fight back against the regulation. (If you haven’t yet done so, please click here!)
By last week, over one hundred members of Congress had written letters to the White House to declare their opposition to the draft regulation. That means that the simple action you took to sign a brief online petition added up powerfully to strike a chord with your Congressional members—and convinced them to speak up.
However, the fight against the regulation is far from over. If the rule were to go into effect—which could quite feasibly happen—it would mean that, as soon as two months from now: Read More »
4. The chance to work on important issues like climate change, ending the war in Iraq, college affordability, or making sure that your campus remains a free and open forum for all ideas (even the ones Anne Neal doesn’t like)
I know a lot of people have just graduated and are looking for jobs. Campus Progress hosts a page on our website called "Work in Progress" where we reguarly post recent job opportunities with awesome progressive organizations. Want a job you can be proud of? Check out Work in Progress! And email organize@campusprogress.org if you stumble upon any job openings that you think we should post on our site.
The Missoulian just published a great article on the Students for Economic and Social Justice, a student group at the University of Montana (UM) that has received a Campus Progress Action Grant for several years in a row for its anti-sweatshop campaign.
The group has already convinced the UM to join the Worker Rights Consortium, and is currently attempting to get their campus to join the Designated Suppliers Program. After running into an impasse in negotiations with the UM administration, they occupied the college president’s office.
Here is an excerpt of the Missoulian article:
Eight of the students involved with the sit-in were arrested and later given three-day suspensions for trespassing and violating the campus student conduct code.
While their activities raised the ire of campus officials, the UM group also garnered national accolades.
Earlier this month, the group was notified it had been awarded the Action Campaign of the Year by Campus Progress, an arm of the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based nonpartisan progressive organization. […]
“We were all pretty pleased to get that sort of validation,” Newman said. “Not only for our work but for the cause in general. There are lots of schools working on these issues. The more attention we can bring to them is all the better.”
Anti-war leaders have bemoaned the current scarce coverage of the war in Iraq. The war is finally back in the headlines, so it’s a great chance for young people to make sure that they are part of the discussion.
Since the earliest days of this administration, Young America’s Foundation has been reaching out to encourage strict enforcement of the Solomon amendment, in order to improve opportunities for students to serve their country and to force an accounting of institutions hostile to our military.
The Solomon amendment is the reason why schools and universities throughout the nation are forced to violate their non-discrimination policies at job fairs by allowing branches of the military to participate. Blockading military tables at job fairs has nothing to do with blocking opportunities for students to serve. It is about ending discriminatory 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policies, it is about changing a system that deceives young people into going to war, and it is about protesting an unfair and illegal war.
Campus Progress wants you to take action on abusive credit card practices! Check out this action alert:
With the rising costs of college, gasoline, food, health care, and other expenses, credit cards are becoming the "safety net" for an entire generation. Unfortunately, credit card companies are using unfair and even predatory practices to increase their profits at the expense of the financially vulnerable or inexperienced. Luckily, there are several efforts in Congress and in the Federal Reserve Board to reign in these anti-consumer practices. In fact, the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights will probably be considered in the House Financial Services Committee by the end of the month. We need your help to make sure that your representative takes this issue seriously. Take Action Now!
Dont forget to check out our Action Alerts Page to make your voice heard on other issues that matter!
Ok, that might be a bit of a stretch, but some of this year's Campus Progress National Conference Award Winners did get some good press.
For example, you might have read about Justin Elliott, who won the CampusProgress.org Contributor of the Year award for his inquisitive interview with the Executive Director of a Pro-Israel lobby group.
Nick Owens and Vanessa Rozier stood out by emerging in an India Post article that praised their 'Black is Beautiful' event as a model for building a progressive movement.
Our Best Publication awardee, Cipher made it on an Oklahoman news site thanks to it's editor Matt Elmore who is originally from Norman.
Last but absolutely not least, our very own Campus Progress Student Representative of the Year, Adrian Shankerbecame (almost) a celebrity in New York websites for his great work year-round organizing events, building movements and speaking on panels.
Once again, congratulations to all of this year's award winners. Keep it up and let's turn this world into one we are proud to be living in.
Campus Progress hosted 200 students on the evening of July 15 in the United State Capitol for the second annual Navigating the Beltway: How to Get a Job on the Hill event. Our 5 dynamic panelists spoke honestly about their personal professional experiences, the ins and outs of the D.C. job hunt and answered questions from the audience. Click here for pictures from the event.
Campus Progress wants you to work for progress! That is why we maintain a section of our website devoted entirely to posting great job openings and internship opportunities in great progressive organizations and interesting publications. If you or someone you know is editing and re-editing cover letters, check out Work in Progress. If you know of some interesting opportunities that our readers should know about, let us know! Email them to organize@campusprogress.org.
By the way, Campus Progress is also hiring for several positions – check them out. If these jobs don’t suit you, take a look at some of the more interesting opportunities we have come across recently below:
The Department of Education recently proposed policies that detail how it will implement the new Income Based Repayment (IBR) and Public Service Loan Forgiveness Programs created through the College Cost Reduction and Access Act last year. These programs will limit monthly payments to manageable percentage of a borrower’s income, and forgive student loans for borrowers who choose a career in public service (click here to learn more).
While most of what the Department of Education has proposed is good, the proposed policies include two unnecessary and costly obstacles for borrowers. Borrowers interested in Public Service Loan Forgiveness would be left in the dark for years on whether their jobs count as eligible public service, and in IBR, some married borrowers would have to pay twice as much on their monthly payments.
Let ED know that they should remove these obstacles – take action now!
Dont forget to check out our Action Alerts Page to make your voice heard on other issues that matter!
That's right. Every year Campus Progress interns spend a week scouring DC for every last pig-in-blanket, mini-muffin, and embassy cocktail.
Each intern will compete to see who can unearth and consume the most delectable free cuisine from Hill receptions, think tank talks, embassy parties, and other events to which they were not invited. The aim is to shine a spotlight not only on the ruthlessness of starving interns but also on the opulence and abundance of food served across the political spectrum by and for Washington power players.
Beginning tomorrow, three interns a day will compete in qualifying rounds, documenting their trials and tribulations on Social Capital. All of their meals, snacks, and crumbs from the floor must be free (not previously bought by the eater or purchased immediately before by another party specifically for the eater).
Please remember that Campus Progress' terms of use do not allow promoting or endorsing any particular political party or candidate for office. Posts or comments that do this will be deleted.
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