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poverty panel? white liberal guilt
By disgruntled cap intern
Jun 26th 2007
at 5:28 pm EDT
i went into the star-studded poverty panel with high hopes. M-1 from Dead Prez, Sen. McGovern, and a slew of impressive nonprofit exec Yale Law types...what's not to like?! my high expectations were not met. it wasn't so much the panelists (although, when i really think about it, what's a rapper doing on a policy panel? he doesn't even have a degree. he uses double negatives.) as the questions that got asked. that's actually what really bugs me about conference like this. i won't belabor it, i'll just give one example from the panel:
a young woman stood up and basically went on a two-minute diatribe about social and economic injustices. she gave some personal anecdotes of instances where she felt she was wronged (e.g. she gets a job and her government benefits get cut). she never really asked a question but she seemed so angry, so passionate, so riled up that the audience gave her a nice round of applause. but to be honest, her rant didnt seem to have much substance to it. she happened to be african-american, which is why, i think, the predominantly white crowd got on their feet. as superduperficial loves to write, white liberal guilt.
I'm sitting at the media credential table at the Campus Progress annual student conference. Over 1,000 attendees, have heard speeches from Sen. Russ Feingold, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Keith Ellison and been to multiple breakout sessions. Highlights include our bosses David Halperin and John Podesta's rousing calls to arms, Feingold's strong statement in favor of redeployment from Iraq, Pelosi's plea that our generation take up combatting global climate change as a primary issue, and Ellison's admonition that the college students in the audience not forget their peers in community colleges and trade schools.
The best panel discussion thus far has been "Breaking Ballot Barriers." OK, you caught me, it happens to be the one I organized. But it did rock. We heard from two student activists: Henry Beck, a city councilman in Waterville, ME, where he attends Colby College, who successfully led a fight against a proposal in the Maine legislature to disenfranchise out of state college students and Andres Idarraga, a former felon in who attends Brown University and worked on the successful campaign to restore the right to vote to former felons in Rhode Island, as well as three nationally known experts on electoral reform.
Dana moderated a panel on feminism that was also extremely entertaining and informative. Her panel focused on how women can improve their representation in politics, and how feminism can be embedded in the larger progressive economic and cultural agenda. It was good to see that there were some very engaged men in the audience.
Soon we'll get to hear from some Iraq veterans on how their experience has shaped their anti-war views. WOO!
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a young woman stood up and basically went on a two-minute diatribe about social and economic injustices. she gave some personal anecdotes of instances where she felt she was wronged (e.g. she gets a job and her government benefits get cut). she never really asked a question but she seemed so angry, so passionate, so riled up that the audience gave her a nice round of applause. but to be honest, her rant didnt seem to have much substance to it. she happened to be african-american, which is why, i think, the predominantly white crowd got on their feet. as superduperficial loves to write, white liberal guilt.