Blog Voices This Week 11/4/07

When I first found blogs in 2003, they were a place I felt at home and not so alone as our country beat the war drums and went on to “re-elect” (??) this criminal administration. I needed a sense of community to shore up my sanity and found it in some of the larger Democratic and progressive blogs.

Then came flame wars and I found myself detached from any particular community. But I still felt like there was something here in this land of blogtopia that I wasn’t ready to give up. So I started to venture out to some of the smaller blogs – especially those written by people who looked and lived differently from me – and found a whole new world. I sometimes feel like the globe is at my fingertips and all I have to do is sit on my couch with this screen in front of me to explore it all. That works for me – given that I’ve always leaned more towards the couch-potato kind of challenge.

So in this weekly series I’m planning to do, I’ll take you along with me and try to just scatch the surface of the wealth of information, experience, and beauty that is the blogosphere.

First of all, Alas! A Blog has a breakdown on Racial Diversity in Presidential Campaign Staffs. Care to guess who has NO people of color working for him? How about a guess on which racial group is not represented in any of the campaigns? Click through to find out if you guessed right.

Angelina and Brad might want to take a look at a guest column written at Jane’s Blog that turns the tables on the issue of cross-cultural adoption a bit to help us see some of the challenges more clearly. Go check it out and walk a few blocks in those shoes.

Vox ex Machina has a roundup documenting cases of College Racism. I’d suggest you start this one by scrolling down to take a look at the size of the list while you ask yourself the question, “Why do we have an educational achievment gap in this country?”

According to the MSM, the response to the California wild fires vindicates the federal and state governments after the shame of how everyone responded to Katrina. But would you be surprised to learn that racism played a role in how victims were treated in Southern California? Nezua has the story over at The Unapologetic Mexican in Racism in a Time of Need.

You might have heard that Document the Silence asked us all to wear red this past Wednesday, October 31st to break the silence about violence against women of color. Many blogs picked up on the challenge and wrote about it this week. Check out what elle had to say about it in her diary titled simply Be RED.

In fact knowing, feeling, experiencing the ugliness of words, as so many women have, is one reason I support documenting the silence. Because I want the silence broken. And I want it broken by words we have learned to use to support, build up, nurture, preserve, love each other.

Because I am worn out by the alternative.

Janna, a new contributor at Citizen Orange tells us about a photography exhibit by David Bacon titled Living Under the Trees. In it, he documents the migrant workers who are living in tents, right next to the wealthy of California, in order to harvest the food that you and I find at our grocery stores.

One thing I haven’t heard much about since 9/11 is how African American Muslims have been feeling in this age of hype about Islamo-Fascism. If you’d like to hear one man’s take on that, I’d suggest a visit to Tariq Nelson’s blog and his diary titled What Happened to Good Islam? From the 117 comments to this post, I’d say that this is a hot topic in the American Muslim community.

Since this week we not only celebrated Halloween, but Dia de los Muertos, I’d like to stop by Latino Politico where Man Eegee takes us on a beautiful trip to visit his ancestors in Of Russian Thistle and Headstones.

Looking back 48 hours or so, I can only smirk at how odd a person I’ve become. Mundane moments to everyone around me can turn out to be powerfully instructive memories to my very identity and worthy mile-markers on my path to reconnecting to mis raíces. Resting now in the tierra, surrounded by nature in its various forms, are keys to the door that I keep trying to unlock.

And finally, if you haven’t found the blog No Impact Man yet, I’d suggest you make it a regular stop. Colin, who lives with his wife, daughter, and dog in NYC, decided to take up the challenge to live for one year with no net impact on the environment. He’s been writing about his experience daily covering everything from alternative activities he found to do with his daughter to tips on worm composts. The year is set to be over in about two weeks, so you’ll want to play close attention as he will probably be drawing conclusions soon. He has a recent diary up on Environmentalism Means Less Deprivation that is particularly powerful. But before you leave his site you MUST check out the photo essay here to see an amazing interaction:

Yes indeed, it is a wonderful world. And with the blogosphere at our fingertips, it’s all only a click away.