As turmoil continued in Iran over last month’s contested presidential election, several hundred people gathered in New York City’s Union Square last Wednesday for a vigil in support of those protesting the vote’s results. The vigil was organized by the NYC arm of Where is My Vote, an Iranian diaspora organization, largely over Facebook and other social media sites.
Participants dressed in green or wearing green armbands lit candles, stood behind large swaths of green fabric and held signs reading, “Where is My Vote?” and “RIP Neda”— the latter in reference to Neda Soltan, whose gruesome death was seen around the world after she was reportedly gunned down by pro-government forces during protests in Tehran.
Many in the crowd chanted “Down with the dictator” in English as well as other slogans in Farsi.
Pilar Marrero and Aswini Anburajan joined Brian Lehrer on Thursday (9/25/08) on WNYC, New York Public Radio to talk about the impact of mortgage foreclosures and the financial crisis on immigrants in the US. They also discussed how economic concerns may affect the election in battleground states like Nevada and Florida, which have large numbers of Latino voters.
In a piece that aired on Marketplace on Friday (9/26/08), Aswini Anburajan reports on the rising political influence of Indian Americans. During the presidential primaries, Indian American donors gave $5 million each to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and half a million dollars to John McCain. Now some of these Democratic voters are seeking to expand their national presence with a political action committee, the Indian American Leadership Initiative.
Ari Kagan, Feet in 2 Worlds contributor and senior editor of the Russian newspaper Vecherniy New York, was interviewed on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, New York Public Radio today as part of the show’s series with immigrant journalists covering the party conventions. Ari described the protests and police reaction at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Click here to listen online.
Here are some of Ari Kagan’s photos of Monday’s demonstrations in St. Paul.
“Millions of Latino voters…are being targeted like never before on the Web, in radio, television and print. Campaigns are hiring strategists, media consultants and recruiting Latinos for the ground war.”
Eleven million Latinos are expected to vote in this year’s presidential election (60% more than in the 2004 elections), and 3 million of them are young voters.
Many media outlets have focused on the emerging Latino vote; but most news coverage has lumped Latino voters of all ages and types together into one category.
In her radio feature that aired on August 18 on WNYC in New York, Feet in 2 Worlds journalist Martina Guzmán examines how the Presidential campaigns are increasingly tailoring their outreach to subsets of Latino voters: a large and diverse electorate that has displayed a spectrum of responses to the candidates’ multi-million dollar ad campaigns.
The Obama campaign has been heavily targeting young Latinos through social networking sites like MiGente – the Latino equivalent of FaceBook. One of the most popular links is a to a video called Podemos Con Obama. According to the William C. Velasquez institute, 50 thousand young eligible Latinos turn 18 every month, and from 2000 to 2004 Latino youth turnout increased by 13 percent.
Although the numbers are high, some consultants argue that the youth vote is unreliable. “This country is changing and young Latino voters are very excited but historically we don’t know if they turnout,” said Republican strategists Leslie Sanchez. Meanwhile the McCain campaign is reaching out to other segments of the Hispanic community such as Latino military families. They are running a television ad called God’s Children in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. That ad pays homage to Latino veterans and soldiers who are currently fighting in Iraq.
Guzmán reports on how the presidential candidates are crafting sophisticated messaging toward Latinos in the 2008 presidential election. Her story aired this morning during Morning Edition on WNYC, New York Public Radio. Click here to listen online.
Feet in Two Worlds reporter Martina Guzmán profiled Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American candidate running for state representative in a primarily Latino district in southwest Detroit, for WDET, Detroit Public Radio.
Martina’s story aired yesterday. You can listen to it online by clicking on the links below.
Feet in Two Worlds reporter and blogger, Pilar Marrero, was featured on WNYC Radio’s Brian Lehrer Show today, where she discussed her recent Feet in Two Worlds blog post and the mixed responses of Latino voters and activists to the McCain and Obama campaigns’ Spanish-language outreach efforts.
In June, Obama’s Indonesian-American sister Maya Soetoro-Ng appeared at a fundraiser targeting Asian voters in California, where she described Obama’s youth in Indonesia and Hawaii (a state where 56% of the population is Asian-American) in an effort to highlight his close ties to their community. Earlier, Soetoro-Ng’s Chinese-Canadian husband Konrad Ng told the New York-based Chinese newspaper World Journal that Obama was deeply influenced by Asian cultural values as a result of his upbringing. This appeal to Asian-Americans will likely increase as Soetoro-Ng continues to campaign more aggressively in the fall and as the campaign makes a more deliberate effort to engage ethnic media to reach voters.
The renewed emphasis on Asian Americans is part of Obama’s evolution in branding from a “post-racial” candidate at the start of the election cycle- remember his “swift and unequivocal” dismissal of race in November 2006—to that of a multiracial candidate who embraces his multicultural identity. Soetero-Ng acknowledged in an Associated Press interview that during the primary season,“the idea was to downplay to some degree race and ethnicity.” But the national maelstrom created by Rev. Wright’s comments and the burgeoning importance of Latino voters lessens the possibility of the campaign doing so now. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Aditi Anand 
Posted by Aditi Anand 
Posted by Aditi Anand 
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