Youth Blog Roundup

From around the youth-blog-o-sphere, its the YR Flows Youth Blog Roundup!

Think MTV:

Power for the Powerless: California’s New Immigrant Voice

Yosimar Reyes is a San Jose poet- and immigrant- who helps High School students explore the complex web of identity issues that surround the labels “immigrant” “legal” and “illegal.”
[Video 3:45]

Youth Outlook:

Eming Piansay: Ain’t Nothing But a G(ender) Thang

It may still be a debate about gender but – sheesh – I am so over this. I would elect a bionic robot with glued on genitals if I knew he/she could run a country. I would even vote for Will Smith with his impressive record of saving the world.

NPR:

[Editor’s Note: okay, not a youth blog, but you need to hear this.]
Non-College Kids Outsiders to Rising ‘Youth Vote’

John Peterson is a 26-year-old skateboard seller who is volunteering his time at an Obama campaign call center. He finds convincing some of his own friends to be a challenge.

“A lot of them aren’t very politically active, and I’m trying to get them down to vote,” he says. Many young people who aren’t enrolled in college are busy starting careers, he says; they “don’t have the time to get out and vote, and they don’t want to make the time.”

NPR’s Audie Cornish digs into the issue of the disenfranchisement non-college youth are feeling this election season. [Audio- 4:30]

Best of [Late] February

For the shortest month of the year February sure has been busy! Of course, we do get a whole extra day to process it, but still… so much has hapened, there’s no way you caught everything.

With that in mind, here’s a few things from the last couple of weeks you may have missed:

The Game is the New Music Studio

When Brandon McFarland sees Amp Live use a PSP to mix a beat freestyle onstage his vision of video games as mere toys changes in a heartbeat.

HEAR: Brandon meet Amp Live and his shocking skills!

SEE: Brandon match his pipes against ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive” Rock Band style.

BELIEVE: The dork on guitar in the video totally isn’t blog editor Noah Nelson. No, really BELIEVE! Please?

Sexuality: Unacceptable

Candlelight vigils and rallies continue in honor of Lawrence “Larry” King, a 15-year-old who was shot at his Middle School in Oxnard, California. Larry was bullied at school for being openly gay and also gender non-conforming — he wore women’s clothing and make-up on occasion — and it is thought that his identity provoked another student to kill him. Anne Santos reminds us that it wasn’t just Larry King’s life that was affected by violent homophobia. Here’s her own story of when she was assaulted for being gay, and how her family still feels the trauma.

Nico Savidge Liveblogs the Texas and Ohio Debates

He brought you the Savidge World of Sports and helps you to Meet The Mess… and now he liveblogs major political events so you don’t have to watch them. Check out YR personality Nico Savidge’s on the spot response to the big showdowns between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.

King Anyi Sounds off on Gary “ABusey”

This is a video posted by Starzlife, who had an interview with Gary Busey. Gary was rough with the young lass interviewing him.. or was he?

Youth Blog Roundup

From around the youth-blog-o-sphere, its our first YR Flows Youth Blog Roundup:

Glamocracy :

Megan Carpentier on the Green Party V.P. choice:

Nader, in fact, announced that his running mate would be Matt Gonzalez, to the wonderment and amusement of 99% of political reporters and the country who have no idea who that is. Luckily, this political watcher has a long me

Glamour Magazine’s politics blog gets into presidential canidate/near political pariah Ralph Nader’s choice for running mate: former President of the SF Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzalez. [Flows editor Noah Nelson has met Gonzalez twice, and has to say he’s pleased with the choice, even if he has reservations about Nader’s involvement with the race.]

Youth Outlook:

Political commentator Russell Morse takes on Hilary Clinton’s waning fortunes in his latest rant:

It almost feels like any day now, Chelsea is going to come out and give her endorsement of Obama.

Morse moves on to the price of gas and malt liquor, American Idol’s falling ratings, and the latest dance craze from the Philippine’s prison system. All that in eight little paragraphs.

Aaron Tang @ activism blog Wiretap:

California Students Tell the Truth

A high school psychology teacher hands out textbooks… and then asks her students to color gingerbread men for a grade. When some of the students ask the teacher to teach them more information, the teacher responds by challenging her students to transfer out of her psychology class if they don’t think they’re learning anything.

Tang writes about California Right to Learn, a program where California students share their stories about the education system, and try to discover just what can be done to save it.

Lil Kim and Remy Ma are the new Biggie and Tupac

Commentary by Tone Kapone

Everybody thought that Lil’ Kim and Remy Ma where cool since seen on MTV’s hip hop honors awards preforming together; unfortunately everyone thought wrong. Their beef exploded over time through YouTube accounts; at first what seemed catty disagreement has gradually became an all out lyrical battle and media war.

The reason why is of course is a he-say-she-say situation over the radio waves that seems to be instigated by the infamous DJ Whoo Kid (a radio personality in New York). Both had very interesting things to say about each other on mutual interviews.

Lil’ Kim: “Every thing she do got to much testosterone in it. She look like a transvestite. Remy MAN grew up on me.”

Remy Ma: “She don’t like her nose, her breast or her face she look like Micheal Jackson now she don’t want me to smack her”.

Both of the female rappers have made underground mix tapes on the other: Lil’ Kim spiting hot verses over the I get money beat sayin’ ”These chicks too busy being to CONCEITED puttin’ on my lipstick you had one hot song well sorry I missed it”. And Remy Ma making a diss video to single when I see her basically saying that when she and Kim meet its going to get real physical.

Honestly I’ve been a fan of rap since birth it so upsets me to see to two of the illest rapers male or female to follow in the steps of Biggie and Tupac. Both of the rapptresses can paint a picture in your head when they flow… they are extremely talented… but they should use there gifts for good instead of taking shots of each other or threating each other. Females rarely get the opportunity to express themselves in the same light as men i hope they take advantage of the platform they have and squash the beef so they can keep hip hop alive and stay clear of the mistakes that other rappers have made and not do the same thing twice but then again who’s to say that a female beef isn’t just a publicity stunt.

Radio Juventud

Subscribe today to Youth Radio’s bilingual podcast at alt.NPR!

In this third installment of our AudioPostales series between Mexico City and Los Angeles, participants in Los Angeles -who happen to be an all-girl cast of reporters- share their ideas on love, relationships, and machismo with the all-guy cast of correspondents in Mexico City- who happen to not agree one bit with girls’ take on most of the above. Is it cultural? Is it a guy-girl thing? Listen and find out!

The Anyi Strikes Back

Its been all around the net twice now… that’s right its “Star Wars according to a 3 year old”:

Our own King Anyi has some serious concerns about this video. Something sinister is going on here, and you need to see Anyi’s response to get the real story.

BOWL CUT!?!?!?!?

More Resources for Political Junkies

Blog Editor Noah Nelson may be off until Thursday, but that won’t stop The Flow!

Here’s a few more websites and blogs we’ve been using to track and deconstruct the election. Use them in good mental health!

Future Majority– a blog focusing on issues important to young progressive voters. Head blogger Michael Connery brings the data in a big way, with aggressive tracking of youth vote trends and how they’ve changed since the last presidential election.

Circle– The Center For Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. A think tank that “promotes research on the civic and political engagement of Americans between the ages of 15 and 25.” Now The Flow won’t lie, paging through a Circle press release can make those uninitiated into the art of parsing tracking data… hey wait.. where you going? Don’t get skittish at the presence of PSAT words, come on! Check it: you want the raw facts? The data? The 411? That’s what Circle has. Lots and lots of it. If you can’t find something in here to back up the youth voting related argument you just made on a message board or in class yesterday it probably doesn’t exist. [In that case, just keep repeating the information until everyone thinks its true. That works 51% of the time. Just ask Karl Rove.]

think MTV: Politics. The Flow has found more than one interesting post at MTV’s site that mixes activism with citizen journalism. We’d be jealous, but then again we ehintr have Viacom’s zillions with which to build websites, nor the desire to answer to Sumner Redstone. [Mr. Redstone, if you are reading this the preceding was a patent lie. For a mere 100,000 Euros a year we will gladly deliver your morning paper each day while wearing a St. Bernard outfit. Note we said EUROS. We’re not stupid!]

The Ohio Debate Part 4

7:25

Senator Clinton was tripped up on a recent question about the successor to Vladamir Putin in Russia, unable to come up with the name of his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. I think it looked bad that she couldn’t come up with his name (I was shouting “MEDVEDEV! MEDVEDEV!” at the TV…) and when she did, said “whatever” about it. I could be nit-picking here, but if we’ve got the possibility of a new conflict with Russia, we should know the name of the person who will be the President of Russia (those elections Tuesday don’t matter – we all know that). If some 16-year-old blogger sitting on his couch, liveblogging, knows who Medvedev is, I think she should, too.

7:30

One of the last questions asked to the candidates was if they would take back any of their votes or statements from the record. Clinton went with taking back her vote for the Iraq war, Obama with a decision regarding the Terry Schiavo case.

The debate, once again, ended on a unified note, a major change from the spirited discussion on health care that started it. Obama and Clinton retracted their respective claws after that first half-hour, and have tried to land only glancing blows on one another. Moderator Brian Williams asked if there were a question that the opponent wants the other to answer, more-or-less baiting the candidates into another scuffle. Obama didn’t really respond to the question itself, opting not to give a question to Clinton, although Clinton said that she doubts Obama’s ability to get things done as a President.

So that’s it for the 20^th Democratic Debate, and the last one before the Texas and Ohio primaries this Tuesday, March 4^th. Stay with Youth Radio and Face the Race for election 2008 coverage from now until November.

–Nico Savidge

The Ohio Debate Part 3

6:40

Senator Clinton is definitely looking like a candidate fighting to return to the race. She has criticized Senator Obama for his stance to take action in Pakistan and negotiate without conditions with leaders of dangerous nations. There’s probably more of this to come tonight, and although the fights have calmed down since the health care dust-up earlier, it might get ugly.

6:45

Actually, there seem to be two fights on the stage tonight – one between Clinton and Obama, and the other between the candidates and the moderators. Clinton has criticized Russert and Williams for bias toward Senator Obama and for using hypothetical questions during the debate. Not only that, each time the moderators try to move on to another topic, the candidates become like a dog being dragged to the vet’s office – they just don’t want to keep going. Obama wants to respond to Clinton’s criticism, Clinton wants to respond to Obama’s criticism, and Brian Williams has to basically fight the candidates in order to get to a new topic or commercial break.

Speaking of commercial breaks, I’ll use this timeout to indulge in the fuel of bloggers everywhere: leftover pizza and Red Bull… oh yeah!

7:00

A tough question to Senator Obama about whether or not he will accept public financing in the general election, if Senator John McCain does. Obama said before the campaign began that he would, but has been less definitive about it since he gained front-runner status. His response was anything but explicit, saying that if he becomes the nominee, he will “sit down” with John McCain and work something out. Obama chose instead to emphasize the number of donors and size of donations, while leaving the door open to negotiations with McCain. Clinton also faced a stiff question on her loan of $5 million to her campaign, and she was very hesitant about releasing information on her campaign, saying she would “as others” do so.

7:10

Senator Obama disregarded the recent support of Minister Lewis Farrakhan. Some might think that Obama’s description of Farrakhan as anti-Semitic might cost him in terms of support from African-Americans, but I just don’t think the Farrakhan commands that attention. He is still a lightning rod in politics (made obvious by his mention in the debate), but I think Minister Farrakhan doesn’t pull the weight he used to.

–Nico Savidge