How many Black Members of Congress? Update

[Updated Dec. 21 2012 - How Many Black Members In 113th Congress?]

[Update Jan. 24, 2009 Thai Time: Roland Burris was appointed Illinois' junior Senator on January 15, 2009 to replace Barrack Obama. The appointment of Burris, an African-American, means that there is still one Black member of the US Senate. (I see that I missed this because it occurred while I was at the Petchabun meeting and out of internet contact for several days.) Today's announcement that Hillary Clinton has been replaced by Kirsten Gillibrand means the number of women in the US Senate stays the same as well.
[Update Dec. 16, 2008: I got through to the Congressional Black Caucus office today to confirm that Donna Christian Christensen, delegate from the Virgin Islands, will return in the 111th Congress and that no new Black representatives were elected from districts that didn't previously have Black representatives. That means that after this election the number of Black members of the US House of Representatives is down by one (William Jefferson lost his election) and the US Senate lost its only Black Senator when Barack Obama was elected President. By my count that means there are 39 African-American members of the US House of Representatives, plus two more African-Americans who are non-voting delegates (from Washington DC and the Virgin Islands).]

[Update Dec. 7, 2008: Black Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson was defeated yesterday in his bid for reelection by Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao. That means one less black congress member, but it also means the first Vietnamese-American congress member.]

Short, not completely confirmed answer, is 40 39 [see update on Rep. Jefferson above.] But there are a number of qualifications. Read on for the details.

In February I posted about the difficulty in getting a simple number count of African-American Congress members. I went through several lists and put together a table where I calculated there were 40 voting House members and one US Senator. That Senator resigned recently so he could concentrate on being president-elect and his replacement is still to be appointed.

After the November election, I thought it was time to attempt to update the table. It wasn't easy. The Congressional Black Caucus site, the one I would expect to have the information, still has the 110th Congress listed. That's fine, but it would be nice if they had something about who were reelected or whether there were new members. Maybe that's too political and they wouldn't want to have to mention if someone lost an election.

In any case, I could find that all but two members have been reelected. In a couple of cases the member had died and been replaced by an African-American since I last posted. Stephanie Tubbs Jones was not replaced until after the November 4 election, by a later special election. Her successor - Martha Fudge, also an African-American - was elected to fill in the rest of the term on November 18 as well as starting the full term in January. The exceptions were Donna Christian-Christensen, the non-voting member from the Virgin Islands. I simply couldn't find any information online on that election. The second is Louisiana Congressman Willian Jefferson. Although he's under indictment, that isn't the reason he wasn't reelected. Hurricane Gustav caused the cancellation of the primary in his district. The primary was postponed until the regular election day. Jefferson won the Democratic primary and the final election will be Dec. 6, 2008.

I had to check each candidate's election separately. I used my list of Congress members and relied on Sourcewatch to see if they had been reelected. Sourcewatch had a nice state-by-state breakdown with pictures of all the candidates. I did not, however, go through all states to see if there were any black faces that were new. It was tedious enough as it was and that seemed a dubious task.

They are listed in order of seniority which was how the original encarta list had them.

[Run your cursor over the top tool bar for controls to print, email, magnify the chart, etc.]
Black Members of 111th Congress

Publish at Scribd or explore others: US Federal Government

While searching I found this August 2008 report on from the Congressional Research Service on African-American Congress members. It has more information about each member beginning in 1870.

While double checking that last link, I found another CRS report on the members of Congress dated May 2008 which says of the 110th Congress:

A record number of 90 women serve in the 110th Congress: 74 in the House, 16 in the Senate. There are 42 black or African American Members in the House, including two Delegates, and one black Senator, the same as the record number in the 109th Congress. There are 30 Hispanic or Latino Members serving: 26 in the House, including the Resident Commissioner, and three in the Senate. Eight Members (five Representatives, one Delegate, and two Senators) are Asian or Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander. There is one American Indian (Native American), who serves in the House. This report will be revised at the commencement of the 111th Congress.

[Update: January 30, 2009 Thai Time: Ragini at Just Jackfruit has put together the information I was originally looking for when I found myself having to create this table to figure things out. H[Sh]e gives the percentage of Blacks, Hispanics, Asian Pacific Islanders, and American Indians and Alaskan Natives, as well as women in the US and in Congress.]

The Fish Fall in Love - Another Iranian Film about a Woman Owned Restaurant

We saw an Iranian film at Out North last night The Fish Fall In Love (Mahiha Ashegh Mishavand) by Ali Raffi. The main focus was a restaurant run by a woman and her female helpers. It was a delightful film - it was good we ate before we went because the food looked fantastic. (There's a trailer for the movie in the link. J wanted to go eat after the movie at the seaside fish shack in the trailer. Me too. But that is NOT the main restaurant in the movie.)

We recently saw another Iranian film -Border Cafe - with a woman owning a restaurant. I don't want to jump to conclusions based on two films, but given how few Iranian films we get to see, I'm guessing this is more than a coincidence. Both films took place far outside Tehran. In the first film, a woman starts the restaurant after her husband dies and she doesn't want to move into her brother-in-law's compound. In last night's movie, the woman starts the restaurant when her beau disappears, and she apparently (since that wasn't shown) moved into his abandoned house where she has the restaurant until he reappears some 20 years later (which is where the movie begins.)

As I said when I wrote about Border Cafe, while Iran is a major topic of our national foreign policy makers, Americans have precious little contact with what is going on in Iraq. These two films, by Iranian film makers, give us a relatively non-political glimpse of life in Iran today. I think most Americans would be surprised at how 'normal' things look. I think about when we were in China. I heard the story about how the Chinese government began allowing American films on television reasoning people would see how violent and decadent the US was. Well, viewers saw the gangsters and druggies, but they also saw inside people's houses and that everyone had a car. These films give a similar view into Iran.

Fresh Snow

We've had more snow since I cleared the driveway Wednesday.Yesterday the snow plows cleared the street and I had to do a little more shoveling - not a good idea - to get the van off the street and into the driveway. Since then we've gotten a few more inches. Here's the deck - then and now -

and the trees in the back yard. There are still a few stubborn leaves.

OK The Film Festival's Complete Website is Now UP

Rand has been working pretty hard to get the 'real' website up. From what I can gather, the person who was going to do it, didn't, and so Rand ended up creating it in the last couple of days. It's a big improvement over the early abbreviated version. It isn't as aesthetically pleasing as we might like, but all the information you need is there, with easy navigation, and lots of links. And if you find any important glitches let Rand know.

Here's the AIFF Main Link. On the other pages, for now, you have to go all the way down to the bottom to get back to the links.

The eagle-eyed might notice that this blog is linked on their main page. What's up with that? Well I blogged the festival last year and they liked what I did and asked if I would be the official blogger. They promised me I could say what I wanted, but I decided it was better to blog on my own and then if I write something that upsets one of the film makers, the Festival isn't responsible. They also threw in a free pass for me this year.

I probably won't say anything terrible about a film, but I did rant about one film last year that I thought was exploiting its subject as well as boorishly demeaning a whole country. I mentioned in an earlier post that if I sound a little promotional at times, it's only because I like films and I like the kinds of quirky films that show up at festivals, so I want as many people to know about the festival as possible so the festival will continue. Will I fudge on what I write to get people out? No way. There are plenty of people in Anchorage who like films. They're my main target. To get them out of the house in the dark December chill when inertia tugs heavily if they even think about leaving the house. But if others who normally don't go out to films hear about a movie on a topic they're into, that's good too.

And maybe if enough people come in from the Valley, they can work with the organizers to have a Valley venue too next year.

Minor Quake

The house just moved a bit. I'd guess it was under 3.5, but it all depends on how far away it was and how deep down.
-----------------------------------------------
[Update: Saturday, 1pm]: When I looked at the link on the 3.5, it said

Less than 3.5   Generally not felt, but recorded.

which meant that I was probably wrong. So I just checked and found this:




So today I found all this on the USGS (United States Geologic Survey) site:


So it was about 150 miles north (as the raven flies).

It was a bit unnerving to see all the recent earthquake activity in Alaska. Most of this we never feel in Anchorage. Alaska is just to the right of the middle near the very top with all the little red and orange boxes.

Anchorage International Film Festival -Special Workshops

There will be four special workshops at the Film Festival - all on the weekends. The workshops, from my experience, give you a chance to hear directly from the film makers and get a behind-the-scenes view of the movie. Sort of like the extra material on DVD's except it's real life and you can ask questions. Going to a workshop may mean you miss films playing at the same time, but catching up via dvd or even Youtube in the future is probably easier than getting a chance to interact live with the film makers themselves.


The workshops are $7 each. If you have an "all films and events" pass, you're covered.

Sunday, December 7, 2pm, Out North:

[All images can be enlarged by double-clicking on them.]

Andrew MacLean, an Inupiaq filmmaker, a local boy with a Sundance Prize, will talk about how he made the film Sikumi. The film itself will be shown

• Saturday December 13 at the Bear Tooth at 12:45 pm in the program "Snowdance Shorts" - a collection of Alaska related short documentaries.

I would hope that Alaska Native parents especially can take advantage of this opportunity to bring their kids. Role models are really important and there aren't that many opportunities to see prizing winning Alaska Native film makers (or any prize winning film makers for that matter.)

Photo of Andrew McLean from Native Works. There's also a bio there.




Friday, December 12, 8pm Out North:

Local talent time. Lots of people now have video cameras - even if it's just the one on your digital camera. So spend some time and make a short video during the conference. What can you lose? Watch for the instructions one week from today - Friday, December 5 - on the AIFF website.


Saturday December 13 11am, Out North:
I haven't seen any of the films, so I can only go by the titles and descriptions. But "The Last Days of Shishmaref"* sounds like a film that all Alaskans should watch. I bumped into a woman Monday who is studying the moving of Alaskan villages due to global warming problems and this sounds like an issue we haven't even begun, as a State, to understand. The movie itself will be shown twice:

• 12/7 Sun 6:15pm Bear Tooth
• 12/13 Sat 12:30pm Fireweed Theatre

So, if you go to the first showing, you'll have questions to ask Jan Louter, and can still catch the second showing if you want to see it again.


*The picture of Loutan is from the site linked above. The website is worth checking out, almost a whole project of its own, including blog excerpts like this one:

This makes me think a little about the criticism I read about Claude Lévi-Strauss:

It is perfectly true that an experienced anthropologust, visiting a "new" primitive society for the first time and working with the aid of competent interpreters, may be able, after a stay of only a few days, to develop in his own mind a fairly comprehensive "model" of how the social system works, but it is also true that if he stays for six months and learns to speak the local language very little of that original "model" wll remain.

The awe and amazement one feels on coming into a completely foreign environment can have one filling in the missing details with our own preconceptions; the quote from Jan's blog does have that amazed and dazzled tone to it. On the other hand, outsiders see things others don't see, and so they also can contribute meaningfully to the conversation. And relatively few urban Alaskans have been to Alaskan villages so this film should give us a peek at Shishmaref through the eyes of a Dutchman.

Saturday, December 13 3pm Out North

I was wondering if this might not be interesting for kids so I googled Jeff Chiba Stearns and got to his MySpace page. [The picture on the right is from his meditating bunny site.] These links took me into many different directions. Jeff has a number of incarnations including snowboarder. If I understood it right, he's a neighbor - he lives in British Columbia. Here's the trailer for one of his animated films, What Are You Anyways?



At the film festival, his short animation, Yellow Sticky Notes, will be shown in a late evening collection called "Love and Pain, Short Films for Adults"

• December 12 Fri 10:10pm • Bear Tooth [Not sure where I got this, the right times are below]
  

• Wednesday, December 10 at 5:30 PM - Anchorage Museum

• Saturday, December 13 at 12:30 PM - Anchorage Museum (Jeff will be at this showing)
  

I've sent Jeff an email to see if the workshop will be appropriate for kids. When I hear from him, I'll let you know.

[Update Saturday Morning: Jeff emailed back that yes, children are welcome:

"The animation workshop is geared toward all ages. So, yes, suggesting it would be great for kids is good. I always gage the direction of my workshops by the range of ages in the audience. I think the kids should be over the age of 8 since I will get a bit technical and really young kids will get bored. The workshop is geared towards teenagers and adults, too."

There's an interview with Jeff at Vancouver Animation where he talks about Yellow Sticky Notes, the film showing in Anchoage.]

Lots to keep us all pretty busy.

Claude Lévi-Strauss One Hundredth Birthday - Happy Birthday!

Today - November 28, 2008 - is finally the day Claude Lévi-Strauss turns 100. And yes, he is still alive. I've tried during this last week to offer a glimpse of what he's written and what others have said about him. It's stayed on the fairly heavy side, so for today, here's something everyone can relate to. This takes place in 1941 (I think) when he arrived in the US to teach at Columbia University.

...I arrived in the spring and classes were already over. I went to introduce myself at the New School where I was told all of a sudden, "You can't posibly call yourself Lévi-Strauss. Here you'll say your name is Claude L. Strauss." I asked why, and they said, "The students would find it funny." Because of the blue jeans! So for several years I lived in the States with a mutilated last name.

Ever since, this unfortunate coincidence has continued to haunt me. Like a ghost! Hardly a year goes by without my receiving, usually from Africa, an order for jeans. Shortly after 1950, in Paris, a total stranger came to my door, saying he sold fabric. He had found my name in the telephone book and wanted to propose my name for a pants factory. I objected, saying my position at the university and as a scholar was incompatible with that sort of undertaking. He told me not to worry and explained that the affair would never see the light of day, all he would have to do was suggest it. "Rather than lose exclusive rights to their brand-name, the company would pay handsomely to halt the project. All we would have to do is split the proceeds." I declined.

A few years ago I was at Berkeley as a visiting professor. One evening my wife and I wanted to have dinner in a restaurant where we didn't have reservations. There was a line. A waiter asked for our name so he could call us when our turn came. The moment he heard it, he asked, "The pants or the books?"

One has to admire the level of education of the waiters in California, for in Paris, when my wife leaves her name in a store for an order and people exclaim because it is such a well-known name, it's always because of the pants, never the books

From Claude Lévi-Strauss and Didier Eribon (1988) Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 30

The rest of the posts in honor of Lévi-Strauss' birthday are here.

I've seen almost nothing in the mainstream media about this 100 birthday. Googling today, I did find this audio report on National Public Radio.

[Update 9:30pm: Anthropologi has a list of web tributes to Lévi-Strauss.]

Coup Coming in Thailand?

The ADN finally had a picture of the protests in Thailand on the front page of the B section yesterday. I guess Alaskans could be affected by the Bangkok airport being shut down so they thought it was news.

For those who want to know more about what's happening, Bangkok Pundit keeps a running account with links to news sources:

A Coup in the Works?

Posted by Bangkok Pundit | 11/27/2008 03:08:00 PM [remember they are about 16 hours ahead of Anchorage, so this report is about an hour old as I'm posting]

Thai Rath reports that PPP MPs believe there will be a coup tonight and are going to mobolise "red shirts". Also, that all 6 coalition parties agreed to use legal measures against the PAD who have broken the law to try to provoke a coup. PPP MPs have promised to mobolise not less than 20,000 persons per MP.

In Bangkok, MPs from the coalition parties will ask people to bring their cars on the streets or taxis to close roads to prevent a coup. The coalition parties believe a coup will happen tonight..

They are also going to release details of the financial backers of the PAD especially Bangkok Bank and Kasikorn bank. They will need to ask society's questions and explain to the people why they shouldn't withdraw their money. They will also opppose the purchase of goods from PAD supporting companies. They believe there will be no bloodshed.

Surapong has disclosed that 33 MPs have written a letter to the PM to fire Anupong. He says there is a "smell" of a coup in the air.

He Said, She Said

The ADN reported the other day on the disagreement about who will become mayor when Mark Begich steps down to become US Senator:

But chairman Matt Claman and vice-chair Sheila Selkregg have very different recollections of commitments that may or may not have been made at a private meeting in April that led to their leadership positions.

I know both these people and think they're both good mayoral material though with very different strengths. I also learned a long time ago, that what I thought I said and what my wife thought I said (and the same about what she said) are often miles apart.

One communication model identifies several places where the message can go wrong.

1. There's the sender
2. The sender has to create a message (the idea he wants to get to the receiver)
2. The message has to go through a medium or two (maybe just a shrug of a shoulder or raising of an eyebrow, or an actual formal language with words which then have to be conveyed through speech, an email, a note, etc.)
3. Then the receiver has to interpret the message she receives.

Each step of the way is fraught with potential problems.

• Has the sender really figured out what idea he wants to send, or is it still a vague idea?
• Has the sender translated it into a clear message? If the message is verbal, are the words chosen and organized unambiguously?
• Does any of the message get lost in the medium through which it is sent? Is the ink smeared? Does the tone of voice send a different message than the content?
• Finally, does the receiver use words the same way as the sender? How does her mental filtering system modify the meaning of the message?
  

It's very possible that they are both 'right.' The message that he 'sent' may well be what he said it was and, the message she received may also be what she said it was. But when two people, even two good people, strongly want the same thing, their communications may get skewed. Or worse.

I hope they can both put this all in perspective. We need another good mayor. And an assembly that can work closely with the mayor, but also stand up to the mayor when necessary. Good luck to the both of them and to all of us.

Driveway's Good, My Back Isn't

There were several new inches of snow this morning and I went out to clear the driveway. Our new neighbors had already shoveled the sidewalk all the way to our driveway! I like these neighbors. The snow was soft and dry and it was easy to clear, but I could also feel a little stitch in my lower left back. I put ice on it as soon as I got in, but I'm still walking funny. The deck in back is going to have to wait. But it's pretty and if I don't clear it now, there won't be any cars driving on it to make it much harder to clear later.


The table is open for tomorrow and J has a turkey hiding in our refrigerator. Being mostly vegetarian means that Thanksgiving is still turkey. But she did get another range grown organic bird. If you want the organic spiel, with video, you can look at last year's turkey post.