Want To Do Freelance? Advice From Freelancers

David Holthouse, Carol Simons, Lew Simons, Wesley Loy, Sarah Gonzales

[These are pretty rough running notes of the panel]

Q:   How did you start freelancing?

Holthouse:  If you have a story, rather than pitching, just do the story, and then try to sell the complete story.

Carol:  I'd followed my husband.  At AARP and Smithsonian, what I expected - never took phone calls and gave my email.  As many pitches as you can.  Send me five short pitches.  If you knew I would only pick one to see your writing.  Find the right editor.  I asked for tips:  know your subjects and know you have to earn money, includes writing things you don't want to write.  Freelance success - $99/year - cheaper than American Society for Authors - good website.


Wesley Loy:  I've been freelancing seriously since 1999.  Most of that time I was a business reporter at ADN.  I've been on my own making a living as a freelancer for about three years.  I was on a specialized beat - commercial fishing.  An obscure Washington magazine that covers fishing called me and asked me to freelance.  Since I left the ADN I've done more for this magazine.  There are some that question doing stuff on the side, but my editor said it was ok.  I'm not up here to play around - I'm from Tennessee - no biking or hiking - I'm here to write.

Sarah:  Reporter in LA, went to parties met a lot of editors, photographers.  Got into freelancing more seriously.  Hard to do it full time.  Do a story, maybe get $250 or even $1000.  It's hardly worth it.  Friends looking at possibility of long term projects you do on contract, instead of one-offs, or even a show.  Got our own funding independently - grant funding.  Set up Content Producers Guild.  A network of people to work with.  When working as an independent it's lonely, so this helps with a network.  Way to have more steady revenue stream.  Still doing stories you want to do.  If you have a project, talk to me or email me.

Q:  If you haven't freelanced, how do you get the attention of an editor?

Wesley:  One of the editors at ADN was freelancing for the Washington Post, and I asked him how to do that.  Hal called the national editor he worked with and said, "My boy here has a story he wants to do."  No internet then.  Had to come to UAA library to read the story a few weeks later.  Did a couple more later.  Always a different editor.  Had to make a cold pitch.  Last story made the front page.  It was about a small mouth bass - I was in Tennessee then.  Last times I did a pitch they didn't now who I was and got nowhere.  Use your connections.

Carol:  Who you know is important.  Take every business card and use those.  Keep pitching.  One freelancer had a goal of x pitches a month and every rejection got her closer to her goal.  Eventually you develop a relationship with the editor.  In Washington, the Associations all take freelance because they have good.  Quirky stories really sell.

Wesley:  That's what I got the Washington Post to buy - quirky stories about animals.

Lew:  Wes' story about changing editors is very common.  The National Geographic was very stable.  Called the Golden Coffin.  Everything stayed the same.  Then it changed, the circulation was declining, and they didn't know what to do.  Should we become more relevant, political, get away from nature?  While I was with them they changed editors and staff photographers.  You never knew who you would get.  I had a great relationship with this guy.  All of a sudden he's to another position and the new person didn't feel the same about me.  Cast that net wide.  . .   A friend in SE Asia was freelancing with a pseudonym because AP wouldn't let him freelance.  

Q:  Can you pitch to more than one outlet at the same time?

Lew:  I've pitched to two different outlets, but made them different enough that it's ok.  I only got one.

Carol:  I asked an editor.  She said if you have a personal relationship with an editor, pick that one.  But she said it was ok to pitch to multiple outlets now.  Have to give to the first response.

David:  A couple motivations:  1) to do work your heart is really in.  2) to make a living.  If just repackaging stories just to pay bills, what's the point?

Wes:  The point for me is to pay bills.

Wes:  What do they pay?  Fish Magazine - $.40/word.  Pacific Fisheries.  These are shoestring operations.  When I get a check, I go to the bank that day.  National Fisherman - the flagship of commercial fishing magazines.  It pays less than the other.  I did a profile of a fisherman, took forever.  $150.  Local publication - Petroleum News - $.35 a word, because I write 2000 words a week.  No serious journalism.  News of record.  Not real fulfilling.  Pays my bills.  Lately, Alaska Business Monthly.  Every state has one of these.  Pays lousy, but I'm grateful.  $.25 a word - 1500 words - get about $300. 

Q:  To David - you said you'd go out and write the story.  Do you pitch the idea or whole story?

David:  I'd send the whole story, not the pitch.  Once you have a relationship with the editor you can pitch.  Tailor to the publication.

Laurie Townsend:  Interesting you say you sent the whole story.  We'd prefer a pitch so we can help shape the story.  Know the deadlines.  If you call us at 4pm, well I don't have time to chat then.  Call in the morning when I'm not getting ready to go on.  You have to do a lot of pitches to eat.  If you get them both accepting, I'd say I already sold that pitch but I there's a different angle to the story I could do.

Q:  How'd you get comfortable to live without a safety net?

Wesley:  I have good relationship with the Fish magazines.  If you have enough volume with steady clients.  I have contract with these two for X words.  That's $750 a week gross.  It's not junk, but it's good informative stuff for a very specific audience.  I have a high standard.  You can make a living at it.

Lew:  I came back from Japan and worked at Knight Ridder.  Terrible time.  Realized I had to work on my own.  Carol had a job.  I had to work, didn't want to work for nothing.  A friend said, if you are happy writing stories you like going where you want to go, even if the pay isn't what it was, it won't matter.  No one goes to journalism to get rich.

Carol:  Can you make a living off of freelance?  It's not easy.  If you have a spouse, one of you needs a job to have health insurance.  It's a hard way to make a living.

Sarah:  I've managed freelancers.  Value people who are professional and on-time and don't ask a zillion questions.  People I would never work with again are really precious with their writing. 

Laine Welsh:  I make it work.  I stuck to what I love - fish.  I have a radio show, then I sell the script.  I have a regular column.  Try to sell the same thing three times in different formats.  I'm a gun for hire - editing, narration, script writing, but all fish related.  Lots of little things come in.

Q:  Repackaging stories?

Wes:  Pitches to multiple outlets.  Between these two magazine.  Big trial about price fixing in fishing, few reporters covering it.  I did a story for this magazine - Pacific Fisheries - then an east coast magazine wanted one, but the stories were very different.  The editor of one magazine saw the story in the other magazine and I got fired.  I probably should have been more upfront.  But they were really different stories.  Later, they approached me and I write for them again.  Why?  Because there are very few people who write about fish in the biggest fishing state in the country.

Q:  How do you pitch for radio? 

A:  Laurie Townsend - for breaking news it's a little hard for someone I don't know.  I've thought about David's sending out the whole story.  It makes sense - they can see that he's a good writer and don't have to wait for the story.

Q:  What about designers.

Carol:  They have a whole art department at AARP where I work. 


I didn't catch everything, but this should give you an idea of how things went.  

Bernardo Ruiz - Covering the Narco Wars

I'm in a session now listening to Bernardo Ruiz talk about his movie Reportero which blew me away at the Anchorage International Film Festival last December.  The movie followed the journalists covering the drug wars in Mexico and how doggedly they follow the drug wars risking their lives.




Reporters were getting killed - he mentioned about 50 murders.  His main subject, Sergio Hara, working for the paper Zeta, had received a death threat and sent his wife and child away, but kept reporting.  Other media stopped reporting on narcotics out of fear.  Yet this reporter keeps on his beat.   The film showed on PBS and you can read a longer description of it there. 

[UPDATE June 7, 2017:  San Diego Union-Tribune reported May 30, 2017 that Sergio Hara was found dead of a reported heart attack at age 60 in his home.]

Bernardo just said that he didn't mean this to sound like a memorial, because Sergio is still alive and well and reporting.   I've done a short video of the opening of this talk.  It should all be available as a podcast at UAA eventually.  But this will give you a clue.



)


[There's a second post with a short video answering my question about what viewers can do to help support Mexican journalists.]


 [UPDATE March 12, 2014: Viddler Video replaced with YouTube.]

To Tweet Or Not - WSJ's Neal Mann Makes It More Compelling

My first invitation to tweet was about six years ago.  I turned it down.  It's grown on the radar but my basic reaction has been, "the only reason to tweet is that people are saying I should"  rather than it does something I need.  When I checked with my kids, they both said, "You have a blog."

Recently I wanted to contact someone and could find no email addresses - only a Twitter account.  But I had to join Twitter to send a message.  He didn't hear from me.

Today, at the Alaska Press Club conference I went to hear Neal Mann of the Wall Street Journal's social media editor talking about social media in news.  Basically the whole conversation was about Twitter and how he and the Journal use it. 


Neal uses Twitter as a news source.   He's got structured lists to watch different subjects and different tweeters.  He talked about setting up a personalized news channel and following particular stories as well as interactions with his 60,000 followers.  Here are a couple of his tweets Friday: 

1. Neal Mann ‏@fieldproducer 13h

   About to talk to journalists at Alaskan Press Club about social media & journalism, plenty to talk about from Boston coverage. #akpressclub

   Expand
2. Neal Mann ‏@fieldproducer 15h

   Alaskan sunrise: http://instagram.com/p/YSnHqAl3KD/ 

   Expand

He said his followers are a source for stories.   But there's a need to verify their identity.  He talked about ways to do that.  On his page, above, you can see the blue dot next to his name which is Twitter's way to verify celebrities and businesses - that this really is that person's Twitter account.  You can also look at how many tweets the person's posted and how many followers he has to get a sense. 


He said Twitter also gives writers, photographers, and videographers a huge platform for pushing their content, which his WSJ job has him doing for reporters there.  Through Twitter each reporter has his own brand.



To the right, he's explaining the parts of his Twitter Deck.

I got a sense of a lot more potential on Twitter, though his news beat is different from what I'm doing here.  I'm still concerned about this being yet another time drain and distraction.  I've got a lot non-blogging projects on my list.  Should Twitter get added to that list?  Will it make my life easier or harder?

Here's a bit of video I found at beet tv where Neal covers about some of the things he talked about today.  I enjoyed this session a lot.  It stimulates a lot of thinking. 











There were several other sessions I attended and there are more tomorrow. Sorry, I'm way behind here. Also met with my UAA new faculty group for lunch. One of them brought his four month old son and I got to play surrogate grandpa for a bit.

If anyone has thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of Twitter, don't be shy about sharing.

Boston Marathon Suspects 1 and 2

These are the pictures the FBI has put up at 2 am Eastern Time.

together

Suspect 1 closer

Suspect 2

I was sure they would have had disguises.  If these really are the people who left the explosive devices, they would appear to have been pretty careless.  With all the security cameras around these days, not to mention people's phone cameras, one would have to assume your image would be captured. 

These pictures are certainly good enough that people who know them can identify them and I'd guess the FBI has their names and information by the time I get up tomorrow morning.

I've noted before and I'll note again - we are much more concerned about intentional harm than 'accidental' harm.  (I use quotation marks because much accidental harm is preventable.)  The Marathon bombings got much more attention than the West, Texas explosions, even though the latter has more deaths.  Partly this might have been fatigue on the part of the media having the Texas deaths follow so closely to the Marathon deaths. 

We all can understand intentional deaths viscerally and they feel so much more outrageous, I think, because we feel they didn't have to happen.  Lucky for corporations whose products and practices kill people, that we're less angry at them for putting profit over people, or ruthlessly ignoring common-sense safety practices.  That we don't feel as strongly that they didn't have to happen, even when that is often the case.  Coal mines that hadn't complied with safety requirements.  Dumping of toxic wastes where they contaminate the drinking water and the air. The human relationship between a person violently killing another person with a gun, knife, or a bomb, is somehow more compelling than someone killing another through neglect or greed.  The latter are harder to see.  But the corporate toxic dumps around the world are killing more people, more horribly and slowly,  than all the bombers combined.  And in my mind delusional killers are less responsible than well educated, well compensated corporate managers whose decisions kill their workers and their neighbors. 

Alaska Airlines Contractor Fined for Exposing Workers "to blood borne pathogens and body fluids including vomit, urine, feces and blood"

Seattle's free newspaper The Stranger  reports today that the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries has fined an Alaska Airlines baggage handling contractor for not protecting employees from various body fluids. 

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) has fined Alaska Airlines-contractor Bags, Inc. for failing to protect workers from exposure to blood borne pathogens and body fluids including vomit, urine, feces and blood. In issuing more than $12,000 in fines, L&I cited the Alaska contractor for four serious violations of state health and safety laws, and two general violations. Under state law, “serious violations” are issued when “there is a substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result” if the problem is not fixed.

You can find the full text of the L&I enforcement action here.

 This is the first time I've ever been glad that Alaska Airlines is headquartered in Seattle instead of Anchorage.  I can't imagine any of our state departments in this administration caring about something like this, let alone doing anything about it.  

Anchorage Has The Three Most Diverse Census Tracts In United States

[UPDATE May 30, 2013:  Chad Farrel did a presentation on this at the Alaska Press Club in April 2014 which gives more info about this study.]

People are surprised to hear about Anchorage's diversity.  The school district regularly throws out the fact that over 100 different languages are spoken in the homes of their students.  But last week the Anchorage Daily News published an article on University of Alaska Anchorage sociologist Chad Ferrel's work showing that the three most diverse census tracts in the US are in Anchorage.

"As of 2010, Anchorage's Mountain View neighborhood is the most diverse census tract in the entire U.S. In fact, three of the top 10 most diverse are in Anchorage, followed mostly by a handful from the borough of Queens in New York. 

Based on the index, Anchorage Census Tract 6 (Mountain View) scores 96.3 out of a possible 100 in its diversity. The other two top census tracts in Anchorage, Tract 9.01 and Tract 8.01, are roughly northeast neighborhoods -- bounded by Ingra Street on the west, Boniface Parkway on the east, Debarr Road on the south, and Glenn Highway on the north."

image from Anchorage Daily News

So, what exactly does that mean? From ARCGIS:

The Diversity Index shows the likelihood that two persons chosen at random from the same area, belong to different race or ethnic groups. The index ranges from 0 (no diversity) to 100 (complete diversity). The diversity score for the entire United States in 2010 is 60. This data variable is included in Esri’s Updated Demographics (2010/2015).

This is part of an ongoing series of articles by former ADN reporter Kathleen McCoy who now works at the University of Alaska Anchorage.  She's been highlighting different UAA faculty and their research.  The whole article is worth reading.  Here's a bit more:

A chief reason why Mountain View ranks as so diverse may not seem intuitive at first. Yes, people from around the world live there. But it scores so high because such a significant percentage of whites also live there,

"A key thing to remember is that white people contribute to the diversity of a neighborhood," Farrell said. Many other high-diversity tracts in the U.S. lack a white presence.

Alaska's other natural diversity driver is the relative size of its Alaska Native population, sending it to the front of the demographic charts over and over.

Taking diversity analysis to the neighborhood level is more revealing than looking at it citywide, Farrell explains. A community may have all the various ethnic groups living within it, but if they don't share neighborhoods, the community is far less diverse that it looks at first glance.

What Do We Know About The Boston Bombing?

NPR has been making a lot of noise this morning about the bombing at the Boston Marathon.  It's like they know this is important and they should spend a lot of time on it, but they don't really have anything substantive to say. So they keep playing the same things over and over.  I haven't looked at other media so I'm not sure what they're doing.

What do we actually know?

Of the basic news questions, what, where, when, who, and why, we know a little about what, where, and when.

WHAT?

I say a little because the 'what' that we know is the result:  two "improvised explosive devices" exploded [our understanding of what exploded is also still evolving] and three people were killed and over 150 injured.  We know about the action of some of the responders, especially the medical response.  There is a lot of 'what' that we don't know- all the action that led to the explosion or what he or they are doing now, whatever security precautions were taken by the race officials, and a myriad things we haven't even thought of yet.

The President, in his short statement today,  took it from the concrete and descriptive to  abstract interpretation:

"This was a heinous and cowardly act and given what we now know about what took place, the FBI is investigating it as an act of terrorism,"

How much was he thinking about the grilling he got over how fast he called the Benghazi attack terrorism?  

WHERE?

The explosions happened near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  But we don't know where they were planned, where the bomber(s) is now, where another explosion might be planned.

WHEN?

Again, we just know the timing of the explosions - the Anchorage Daily News reports it as "shortly before 2:50pm about four hours into the race."  We know nothing about how long this has been in the planning and whether another time is already planned.  We don't know when suspects will be apprehended or a trial will be held.

We really know very little about what, where, and when.  But compared to who and why it seems like a lot.

WHO?

We know very little about the victims and while we all have concern for them, I think we're most curious about who planted the explosive devices.  The President narrowed it down to:

 "a terrorist organization, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual."

Foreign or domestic covers the likely universe of suspects, but I think the rest of this may be a bit narrow.  When exactly does a 'group,' say, become an 'organization'?  And what turns a group or an organization into a 'terrorist organization'?  By detonating the explosive at the Boston Marathon, the perpetrator became a 'terrorist' if he/they didn't fit that category before.  But I suspect the President's words imply an existing organization with an already existing identity as terrorists.  But is that an identity they have themselves or an identity the US government or some other authoritative body puts on them?  (Were the original Boston Tea Party participants patriots or terrorists?)

I'm not trying to question whether this was a terrorist act, but rather whether this might have been carried out by an organization whose existence is known, but hasn't previously been considered terrorist.  Or the more chilling possibility of someone trying to stir up fear for political gain.  (I'm reading The Man Without A Face:  The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin which begins with apartment bombings around Moscow and other Russian locations that were blamed on Chechen rebels, but were apparently the work of the Russian Federal Security Service to build fear and nationalism among the Russian voters.)

And 'malevolent individual' again leaves out that in-between category of group. Plus it would seem that 'malevolent individual' merely tells us it's a person with the intent to do evil to others - not anything we didn't already know.  What if it was a delusional person who thought he was saving himself or others this way?  I'm merely saying we shouldn't close off reasonable options.

Terrorist groups tend to take credit for their projects.  We've been told no group has claimed credit and that the Pakistani Taliban denied responsibility.  Nor, apparently, had there been prior warning.  Though it's probably too early to be sure about that. 

He also told us who in terms of people in charge by telling us he was briefed by his National Security Team which includes

"FBI Director Mueller, Attorney General Holder, Secretary Napolitano, and my Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco"

WHY?

Ultimately, this seems to be the question most on people's minds.  The main clues we have at this point relate to the target, or what we assume to be the target, the Boston Marathon.  What does it represent?  Who would want to attack that symbol?

Boston:  Irish, liberal, Catholic come to mind. Boston Tea Party, abolition, elite education (Harvard and MIT plus a bunch of other universities), Logan Airport where 9/11 terrorists started, Red Sox, Cheers.

Marathon:  Running marathons is an 'achiever' sport.  It's not something people do lightly and for the Boston Marathon you have to qualify by running other marathons.  It's a non-motor sport.  An individual sport (not a team sport - though there are groups that run as teams.)  It takes endurance and planning. 

There are lots of possible motives there.  But it could be that the bomber is from Boston and it was just a convenient target.  Or that this was a personal attack on someone disguised to look like a terrorist attack.  (Probably not likely, but it should still be a backup motive until they're certain.)

It's more likely that the culprit(s) will be found through following the evidence he left at the scene, through photos or videos, or through a tip from an insider or someone who knows the bomber (like the Unabomber's brother sending info), rather than starting with the motivation.  But considering motivation certainly helps law enforcement prioritize their efforts.  (Though I would expect the bomber to have been well disguised so the photos will not be that easy to interpret.)

It seems prudent at times like this to take everything you hear with a grain of salt.  There's much that isn't known.  But the authorities also know, but aren't telling.  (Obama took no questions after his statement today, suggesting to me he does know more and doesn't want to have to evade questions.)

And, in a day or two, we can probably expect a full press Republican attack on why the US was not prepared for this event and how poorly the President responded.  That's just how they work.

But for a day or two, everyone will hold their tongues, make obligatory statements about unity and prayers for the victims and their families. 

Most average Americans will be sending genuine love and prayers to the victims and their families and paying special attention to the people around us.  Perhaps we can tap into these feelings of shock and outrage to understand how the people of Iraq and Afghanistan feel after the bombings that kill civilians there.  And how some might raise an eyebrow about our reaction today in contrast to our response to the events in their countries where far more are killed this way and where we have such a large presence. 

42 and Accidental Racist

I heard the Accidental Racist shortly before going to see 42.  42 is the movie about Jackie Robinson's first year with the Dodgers and all the racism he faced as the first black player in the major leagues.  It was 1947. 

The weight of racism is shown as crushing.  White and Colored bathrooms in the South.  Blacks can't stay in white hotels even in many parts of the North.  Branch Ricky, the Dodger owner who decides he wants to bring up a black player - well colored or Negro in those days - has his manager kicked out of baseball by the commissioner of baseball as retaliation.  The other Dodger players wrote up a petition against playing with a black player.   And the Philadelphia Phillies manager Ben Chapman hurls epithets at Robinson that were nastier than the balls his pitchers hurl at Robinson's head.

To whites it wasn't crushing.  It was normal.  It was how things were.  Natural.  They weren't racist.  The other players slowly began to get it when the Philadelphia hotel they always stayed in told them their reservations had been canceled because they had a black player on the team.  Some of them reacted at first by blaming Robinson.  But after Chapmen's tirade on the field, one of the Dodger players finally walks over to Chapmen and tells him off.  Because the team is affected by the racism against Robinson, the other players begin to get it.  Peewee Reese, a player I got to see when the Dodgers moved out to Los Angeles in the 50's, plays a pivotal role in 'learning' about racism and how to stand up to it.  I'll leave it like that so as not to spoil it for those who haven't seen the movie. 

After we saw the film, I thought about the responses I've heard about other historical movies:  "Well, that's all in the past.  We don't have racism any more." This wasn't that long ago, it happened in my lifetime, though before I was old enough to know anything about it.




Like Robinson's teammates on the Dodgers who are only discovering racism through Robinson, Paisley has no idea that a Confederate flag has a negative meaning until the clerk at Starbucks reacts.  The flag is a powerful symbol, not of personal prejudice, but of institutional racism.  And while slavery ended, it was quickly replaced by an oppressive set of laws and practices that made blacks second class citizens to all the whites.  And when the most overt signs of legal barriers to blacks were dismantled - separate water fountains and bathrooms, separate schools and pools, etc. - there were still plenty of institutional barriers - financial barriers like redlining by banks and realtors, educational barriers, employment barriers, and marriage barriers to name some of the most significant, that made the black path to the American dream much, much harder.

Accidental Racist is taking a lot of hits from detractors.  Here's an example from Conservative Blog Central that has the "I'm not responsible for history" theme: 

Mr. Paisley is typical of white left-wingers who think this country is horrible because of blips in the past where we weren't on our best behavior or living up to our ideals. Jim Crow laws were awful. Segregation, etc., all of it was bad, and an affront to what this country says it stands for. But we reversed course long ago. A lot of men died to reverse that course, but nobody seems to remember that. Any racism that continues in this country is the fault of individuals, and I refuse to join the pity party and say that slavery is my fault.

No, you aren't responsible for slavery, but if you have ancestors who benefited from slave labor you've inherited some of that benefit either in actual tangible wealth or in an inherited sense of entitlement and superiority.  A lot more people than slave owners benefited.  People involved in shipping benefited.  Even if they didn't carry slaves, those ships that did were not in competition with those that didn't.  Merchants benefited if they  made profits from goods that slaves helped produce.  Consumers got cheaper goods.  But even if there was no tangible benefit, whites everywhere inherited the belief they were superior to blacks.  Even liberal whites. It permeates our culture. 

The point isn't to make people feel guilty.  Rather it's to just recognize the injustice that still exists and help to dismantle those institutions that put blacks at a disadvantage. 

Leonard Pitts makes this point at the end of this critique of Paisley's assertion that whites can't walk in black skin:

But the song also fails in a more subtle, yet substantive way. Twice, Paisley speaks of the impossibility of imagining life from the African-American perspective: “I try to put myself in your shoes,” he sings, “and that’s a good place to begin, but it ain’t like I can walk a mile in someone else’s skin.” As if African-American life is so mysterious and exotic, so alien to all other streams of American life, that unless you were born to it, you cannot hope to comprehend it.

That’ a copout — and a disappointment. Say what you will about his song, but also say this: Paisley is in earnest. His heart — this is neither boilerplate nor faint praise — is in the right place. Credit him for the courage, rare in music, almost unheard of in country music, to confront this most thankless of topics. But courage and earnestness will net him nothing without honesty.

Every day, we imagine the lives of people who aren’t like us. Those who care to try seem to have no trouble empathizing with, say, Cuban exiles separated from family, or Muslims shunned by Islamophobes. For a songwriter, inhabiting other people’s lives is practically the job description. Bruce Springsteen was not a Vietnam vet when he sang Born In The USA.

But where African-American life is concerned, one frequently hears Paisley’s lament: how a white man is locked into his own perspective. That’s baloney. Both history and the present day are replete with white people — Clifford Durr, Thaddeus Stevens, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leon Litwack, Tim Wise — who seemed to have no great difficulty accessing black life.

One suspects one difference is that they refused to be hobbled by white guilt, the reflexive need to deny the undeniable, defend the indefensible, explain the inexplicable. They declined to be paralyzed by the baggage of history. One suspects they felt not guilt, but simple human obligation.

We Are Respectable Negroes blog has a long and interesting discussion on this.  Here are a few parts:

"In the post-civil rights era, white folks apparently just want "forgiveness" and to "get past" this race stuff. Black and brown folks want some type of justice and an acknowledgement of how structural inequality along the color line persists into the present. The former want to limit racism to "mean words" and "hurt feelings." The latter would like to discuss substantive efforts at improving live chances and the social inequalities caused by racism, both structural and inter-personal. . .

Because America is "a country without a history"--perhaps except for black and brown folks--there is no reasonable way to negotiate this impasse.

This dynamic is made even more complicated by how white privilege allows white folks to conveniently discover their own history on terms that are amenable to them.

This move is often used to blunt conversations about how racial inequality is trans-historical with a living past and present, one that shapes American society even in the post-civil rights era."

Despite these criticisms, Accidental Racist at least cracks open the door on a subject many whites refuse to acknowledge - the continued existence of racism.  Paisley, like the Dodger players for the first time seeing racism from the receiving end, is now at a point where you can have a conversation that gets a little deeper into what Confederate flags symbolize to African-Americans, about how racism isn't simply about epithets, but more importantly about the legal, educational, and financial infrastructures that make being white a lot easier than being black.  And Paisley sings

"Lookin' like I got a lot to learn, but from my point of view . . ."

Recognizing he's got more to learn and that what he believes is "my point of view" rather than "reality" is a big deal.  It's the start to remodeling one's world view.  

Do go see 42 and take the kids above seven. 
And listen to Accidental Racist. 

Did You Notice There Are Now Two African American US Senators?

For the first time in US history, there are two African-American members of the US Senate at the same time.  These are only the seventh and eighth African-Americans ever to serve in the US Senate. 

Tim Scott (R-NC) was appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley to Jim Dement's seat when he quit to run the Heritage Foundation.  He'll serve until a special election in 2014 to fill the remainder of Dement's term. 

William 'Mo' Cowan (D-Mass) was appointed by Gov. Deval Patrick as Interim Senator until the June 15, 2013 election to fill the remainder of the term of John Kerry, who recently resigned to become Secretary of State. 

I try to keep up with these details since I first posted about the number of African-Americans in Congress.  I couldn't find the information conveniently formatted, so I made it myself.  Since then I've tried to keep it up-to-date after elections or other changes.  The last post was after the November 2012 elections  which I updated just now to incorporate this information.

This makes 43 black Members of the 435 seat US Congress or a smidgen under 10%, while as a whole African-Americans make up 14% of the US population.  In the 100 seat US Senate, they make up 2%. 

In the House, Robin Kelly won the special election to finish out the term of Illinois Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. who resigned. 



If you read carefully, you should have noticed that both the Black US Senators were appointed by their respective governors, not by the voters of their states, though Massachusetts has elected a Black Senator before: Edward Brooke.

Hall 4296 Moe 3978

I checked about midnight last night before I went to bed, but the old April 2, 2013 unofficial elections results were still up.

Even though the "updated unofficial results" are marked '6:18pm' I only saw them when I checked again this morning.

I had the sense when I was watching the count of the absentee-by mail votes being counted that Hall was gaining votes, but it wasn't at all clear.  I know there are a lot of votes for Moe that were challenged and are not in the count.  Enough to overcome a 318 vote lead by Hall?  I don't know.

Most of them are the write-ins that have Nick Moe (or a close variation) written in, but the voter left the oval blank.  At the end of yesterday I would have guestimated that there were at least 100 like that.  If we say that each 26 precincts in District 3 averaged 6 like that, it would come out to 156 more uncounted votes for Moe.  The ordinance specifically says that the oval has to be filled in, at least with some mark.  The Alaska Supreme Court said in the Miller v Treadwell decision (on the Murkowski write in vote) that even those clearly written in without the oval marked wouldn't count.  The Muni ordinance follows the State law on this closely. 

There were also some ballots where people who live in District 3 voted out of precinct on ballots that didn't have the District 3 race on them.  They still wrote in Moe.  So, these were people who were eligible to vote in that district, but did not vote in their home district.  These votes weren't counted either.  I'd guess there were 15-30 of these at most.

Then there were a lot of votes for variations of "Nick Moe" that were not counted.  The Election Office had a list of acceptable and unacceptable misspellings of "Nick Moe."

Acceptable	Unacceptable
Nic Moe Nik Moe Nick Mo Nic Mo Nick Mow Nick Moh Knik Moe Knick Moe Nick Moo N. Moe N. Moa N. Mow Nicolas Moe Moe	Nick Mo Moo Moa Nick Smith Click Moe Pick Moe John Moe Tommy Moe

HTML Tables

There were, of course, a lot more variations that showed up that the Municipal Clerk had to decide on.  Things like Rick Moe and many others. 

There were also a couple where both the Ernie Hall oval and the write in oval were filled in, Nick Moe had been written in and Ernie Hall had been crossed out.  The Clerk ruled these were overmarked which is explicitly not allowed in the rules. 

I know the attorneys for the two candidates kept track of all the disqualified votes.  They'll know for sure if there were enough thrown out votes to keep Moe in contention.  It will be up to the Moe team to decide whether to challenge the election. 

I learned that Hall's attorney in this, Scott Kendall, was Murkowski's attorney when Miller challenged her write-in votes.  He had argued in court that the ballots that had Murkowski written in but without the oval marked should count.  If this election were to go to court, he would be in the position of arguing against what he argued last time.  I got some well-appreciated confirmation when he told me that my post on what might happen in a lawsuit over the questioned ballots was a good, accurate piece.  I figure he should know.  He went on to add to what I'd written the idea of subjective and objective measures.  Once you allow for the possibility of slight misspellings in the name, what is acceptable and unacceptable is subjective.  And the law didn't clearly say the write in had to be spelled right.  However, the law clearly says the oval must be marked and you can objectively see that it has or hasn't been.  He thought it would be pretty hard to get them to change that decision.  He did say that he had put in my arguments - that writing in the name showed intent and that with a write-in vote you didn't really need to fill in the oval to show which candidate you wanted - and they rejected them.

On the other hand, he didn't have the Court's strong language on voter intent,  the importance of enfranchising people, and the need to overlook minor mistakes, because of the variable backgrounds and abilities of Alaskans if their intent is clear. 

But if there aren't enough challenged votes for Moe to overcome the 318 vote deficit, this is all moot.  However, the Assembly ought to look very carefully at these issues and see if there are some changes that could be made to the Ordinance to increase people's ability to have their votes counted without compromising the integrity of the count. 

The Election Commission still has to certify the election and the Assembly has to officially except the results. 

I'd note that I left City Hall yesterday late afternoon before the final tallies were totaled.  So did most people.  While the results are marked 8:15:31pm, I couldn't pull them up around midnight last night.  I don't know what the totals were for the different categories of ballots that were counted - absentee-in person; absentee mail in; questioned ballots, etc.  But both candidates' attorneys were there and I have no question about the integrity of the vote count.  There were things that shouldn't have happened - like the Election Commission not counting the questioned votes when the voting official failed to sign the questioned ballot form -  but altogether the Municipal Clerk, in my mind, kept the process as transparent as she could.  Every decision she made was after explaining her understanding of what happened and the how the Ordinance applied and listening to the two attorney's offer their takes.  And she went way out of her way to preserve all the votes and even to identify where there might be write-in votes for Moe, even though she had ruled them ineligible, so that should there be a court case, all the votes were preserved and the candidates' attorneys knew where they were.